[stars1234]

My HDD has been getting slower and slower.
Today, I check the IDE Primary Channel, driver properties to see what mode it is in. It was PIO!

I went to the BIOS. All was fine there. It's set to Auto, so the drive should be in UDMA mode.

No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work. I decided the drive had gone bad.

One final check of the MS KB, revealed that this is a known problem with Windows 2000, 2003 Server and XP.

If you have your system set for power-savings, to go into "suspend" mode while you are away, after a few cycles, things will start going bad.

The controller software can't figure out what's happening and each time your system cycles several times between suspend & wake, the UDMA is reduced a notch, until it is finally in the lowest PIO mode--and stuck there.

Although everything is set up correctly, no viruses, etc., this will always happen!

I found the answer here: http://support.microsoft.com/default...roduct=win2000

Here is a work around:

WORKAROUND
To re-enable the typical, or faster, transfer mode for an affected device:
Double-click Administrative Tools, and then click Computer Management.
Click System Tools, and then click Device Manager.
Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers node.
Double-click the controller for which you want to restore the typical DMA transfer mode.
Click the Driver tab.
Click Uninstall.
When the process completes, restart your computer. When Windows restarts, the hard disk controller is re-enumerated and the transfer mode is reset to the default value for each device that is connected to the controller.
STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article [W2k, server2003, XP].

I tried it. After the 7 hours of pulling my hair out to figure what was wrong, it was fixed.

The ariticle goes on to tell how to modify the registry, but it isn't certain that will work.

It also says you can call MS for $$$ and get the patch or wait for the next SP. On my W2K system, I already have SP4.

I'm going to try the registry solution (make sure you make a backup) and if that doesn't work, I will disable the power saving features of the system.

If you had UDMA and now it's only PIO, this could be the answer.

Bob T.

[AlbertB]

The power saving modes in Windows are a real dog's breakfast. I have had trouble with them myself a while back as have many people by the past posts on the subject. The usual recommendation is to turn the damned things off and do without!

Don't know how old your system is but I had a similar problem a long while back which was to do with my IDE controller. If your system is more than a couple of years old you might try checking this thread:
IDE controller <!>d out