Hi Everyone. I just wanted to post this to possibly save someone else the agony that I went through. I did a clean install of XP Pro(NTFS) and everything went smoothly. However, I noticed a dramatic decrease in performance.(I previously had FAT32 withME.)I had read that NTFS, while more reliable and secure, was a slower file system than FAT32. Anyway, Mine was a LOT slower. It didn't seem right for a (Athlon 1GIG, 768MB of Ram).
Soon, my mouse started breaking up and programs took forever to load. After much research and questions and headaches, I found out that my DMA was not enabled! Stranger still was the fix. Even though (device manager,Controllers,Primary IDE Channel,Properties, Advanced)tab said "DMA if available", XP chose to disable it. All I did was change the tab to "PIO only", click OK, change it back to "DMA if Available" and click OK again. That was it! No reboot or anything and my DMA was enabled. And what an amazing difference in performance. Bottom line- If you are having a problem with very slow perpormance with XP (Or any other OS for that matter), However you fix it, make sure your DMA (Direct memory access)Is enabled! I hope this helps someone. Thanks for listening http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Thanks for the tip, jabarnutcase! We appreciate having you around!

On a similar note, I've got a Vision Top socket 7 board with a VIA MVP3 chipset. For me to get DMA enabled in Windows 98, I actually had to disable (or maybe unselect is a better word) it in the BIOS settings! I picked that up, somewhat indirectly, from the support section of the Nero website.

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Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.

[This message has been edited by pentachris (edited 05-29-2002).]

Thank YOU pentachris! It's great being around. This is a really cool site- Wish I found it a long time ago! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif