win xp cyrix cx5530 dma issues

I'm using WinXP (not XPe) with a Cyrix cx5530 / NS Geode SBC. I took
out most of the unecessary programs and stopped a lot of services with
XP Lite, so XP is running fairly smooth.

Unfortunately, even though I've selected "DMA if possible", the primary
IDE channel always reverts to PIO mode. I've tried uninstalling and
reinstalling the channel. I've also tried deleting the
MasterIdDataChecksum and SlaveIdDataChecksum registry keys. I've also
tried changing the cable and removing unecessary hardware, but it's
still in PIO mode. Has anyone fixed this before? Is there another
cx5530 UDMA driver I can use?

<louloizides@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1137418755.917142.188130@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
> I'm using WinXP (not XPe) with a Cyrix cx5530 / NS Geode SBC. I took
> out most of the unecessary programs and stopped a lot of services with
> XP Lite, so XP is running fairly smooth.
>
> Unfortunately, even though I've selected "DMA if possible", the primary
> IDE channel always reverts to PIO mode. I've tried uninstalling and
> reinstalling the channel. I've also tried deleting the
> MasterIdDataChecksum and SlaveIdDataChecksum registry keys. I've also
> tried changing the cable and removing unecessary hardware, but it's
> still in PIO mode. Has anyone fixed this before? Is there another
> cx5530 UDMA driver I can use?

I ran into the same thing with my desktop PC (using a SATA drive) - seems to 
be a known pathology with XP. After many months of faultless operation, my C 
drive reverted to PIO mode - and wouldn't budge no matter what I tried. I 
uninstalled/reinstalled drivers, did various registry cleanups [1], got 
nowhere. Finally moved the drive to another SATA channel, and it's been fine 
ever since.

If it happens again, I'm in trouble. Can't see any solution short of 
re-installing XP - or (better still) sticking with Unix and finding non-MS 
versions of all my compilers/CAD packages etc. If you find a solution, I'd 
love to hear it.

[1] Some references:
 http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx
 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817472/

Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com