My girlfriend's PC is an amalgamation of old and new parts. The ten-year-old motherboard went south and needed replaced, but the IDE hard drives were still in good shape. Seeking to merge the old with the new, it was upgraded from a 750MHz AMD Duron processor on a decade-old Gigabyte motherboard (hot when AGP first debuted) to one of the newer Intel Core 2 Duos with a Gigabyte S-Series motherboard. IDE is on the way out, replaced by Serial ATA, so I had to look specifically for that in whatever motherboard I was going to buy.
We put the thing together, fired it up, installed Windows XP Pro, got everything else on there, and she started happily plugging away on the upgraded monster (slipped a Geforce 7950GT in there to replace the 3dfx Voodoo3 too, to feed her growing gaming habit). Everything seemed ready to cook.
As an avid online-TV watcher, it wasn't long before she discovered the sound and video in the stuff she was watching would stutter often, though it seemed to smooth out as things played on. I initially chocked it up to buffering issues, but when it started happening in offline videos and music in Windows Media Player and iTunes, I knew something was amiss.
We tried updating sound hardware drivers, but that didn't help. Then we defragmented the hard drive, but to no avail. I even replaced the IDE cable, but nothing changed. I had narrowed it down to only happening when the C drive was being accessed, though. She tested it by playing a video file, then in the middle of it, she initiated a file copy from her laptop through the LAN to the afflicted machine's C drive and sure enough, as soon as the HDD activity LED lit up, the sound started getting choppy. Even Windows start up and shut down sound events were affected.
After a few minutes of tireless searching (hey, I'm good), we stumbled onto a couple very specific fixes other users fighting this problem had reported.
The first was to see if Windows had reverted the Transfer Mode between the hard drive and motherboard from the more common and faster DMA back to the slower but more reliable PIO. Windows switches automatically to PIO after a number of disk errors are reported, as it's apparently a more stable reading method. Problem is, since it is slower, it can cause glitches like what we were experiencing, and it's particular to IDE drives, so I wouldn't have seen this before on our other machines, which use SATA exclusively.
To check for this, go to Settings-> Control Panel-> System-> Device Manager-> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers-> Primary IDE Channel-> Advanced Settings. Look under Device 0 and it should be set to "DMA if available." If it says "PIO only" instead, change it, click OK, save settings, and reboot. This may resolve your issue, though if the disk is really going bad, Windows is likely to change it back to PIO after some time, and you may want to look into getting a new hard drive.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Kyle
Hey, I'm having this exact same problem and followed the steps up to and through the registry portion. The only problem with completely following through with the instructions given is that there aren't any subkeys with the description of "Primary/Secondary IDE Channel". Of the four subkeys my computer displays, there aren't any with MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum to be deleted. I'm moderately confused on what to do from here to fix this problem, needless to say. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
2 - Mark Buckingham
Did you try the other fixes described earlier in the article? Even tho they didn't work for us doesn't mean they won't work for anyone.
Further, what operating system are you using? XP, Vista, or something else? That might make a difference in terms of where the reg keys are located, how they're organized, or whether they're there at all. The systems we were working on were all running WinXP SP2 or SP3.
It's also worth noting that the problem seems to have returned on our affected system. Haven't had a chance to run through the fix process again to see if it'll eliminate it again. Hopefully I'll find a permanent fix soon. Might just be the IDE drives, and/or that they have to share an IDE cable/port. I'll post any new findings as they come up.
3 - Kyle
Yes, I tried all the previous fixes before I actually found this article, haha. That's when I started searching Google for other possible fix and thought your article was a God-send. I'm working with Vista right now. This computer's a recent purchase, and I'm not all too familiar with the OS.
Everything runs smooth, the only problem is similar to what you were having with your mentioned machine. Only if I multitask, that's when the choppy sound and video-playback hit. If I do absolutely nothing but watch the movie or listen to the music, it's fine for the most part with the occasional skip.
I followed the instructions in regedit down to the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers subkey area, and that's where it all stopped being exactly as you described it. Which I can see making sense, now. You were on XP where as I'm using Vista.
Also, I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but this machine has 4 hard drives on top of two external. No cords are shared, though. Two SATA and two IDE. I'll keep checking up on this page for any further information!
Thank you a lot for looking into the problem, this is literally the only useful page on the subject out of 50 pages of search results.
4 - David
I had this exact problem. Your fix worked well. Thank You. I also need to reinstall my SigmaTel audio codec.
5 - brendan
dude you fixed my computer, i love you
6 - Mark Buckingham
Glad it's worked out well for most of you. :)
As for the Vista system, it's possible the keys are there, but in a different area. You could try hitting Ctrl+F (or go to the Find command under Edit on the top menu) and type in any of the specifics from above, like DriverDesc, Primary IDE Channel, or MasterIdDataCheckSum, and search the registry to see if they might be there hiding somewhere.
The only version of Vista I have is on an all-SATA computer (no IDE), so it'll be a little tricky to find out more. Let me know if the registry search turns up anything interesting.
7 - Joe B
I couldn't be more excited right now. You are a lifesaver. I'm a musician and none of my multimedia worked for the past couple weeks. It was really frustrating but now it's fixed! Thanks!
8 - Dave
OMG! THANK YOU! My system runs so much more smoothly now and the audio is perfect. This fixed a couple of other problems I had with multimedia applications crashing on exit too. It's even loading windows faster! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
9 - Mark Buckingham
Excellent news! Glad to hear this helped someone else out there.
10 - jason
thanks a million for this solution! i couldn't simply reinstall windows because it's a netbook that doesn't have a cd drive and also didn't come with a copy of xp. the audio is very important, as we do a podcast and it is crucial. anyway thanks, the problem is fixed!
11 - Taylor
holy cow ive been trying to figure this out forever, audio and video playback are impeccable, thank you.
12 - Sara
THANK YOU! My computer started playing videos and music in a terrible, choppy way out of the blue, and as a consequence I was unable to listen to any tracks without being disturbed by the minute breaks. Yours registry key deletion fix worked, my computer is functioning like a dream again. Bookmarking this for future reference!
13 - Cole
NO! I got so excited when I saw this. I had the same problem as you but I tried this and it is still not fixed. I tried both your solutions and it didn't help. Does anyone know any other possible fixes? I have tried updating drivers, closing other programs, slowing playback speed, and both these solutions already.
14 - Mark
How old is the hard drive? Is it IDE or SATA? Eventually we pulled the main C drive, a 10-year-old IDE drive that was showing its age...just slow to boot, access, and everything else. The new drive installed was SATA and all has been fine since then. You could migrate your existing drive's data to a new drive using a program like DriveClone, and not have to start all over reinstalling Windows and everything else.
15 - Cole
The main hard drive I am using is one that I pulled out of an external hard drive cuz it stopped working. The external hard drive was only a couple years old. It is an IDE hard drive. The slave drive is about 5-10 years old and is also IDE but I wasn't running anything off of it so idk if that affects anything.
16 - Cole
And also, I re-installed XP on the current slave drive a couple weeks ago before I pulled out the other hard drive out of the external and had the same problem on that hard drive even though it was fine before i reinstalled XP on it.
17 - Mark Buckingham
First thing I'd try is unhooking the power connector to the secondary drive, and boot without it in the equation.
From the sound of it, you reinstalled XP on the older slave drive? The age of the drive alone could be an issue.
I pulled the old drive we had the problem with and put it in another machine to test Vista on, and it seemed to handle it just fine, so the problem may be a little random.
Another thing to consider....the drive that caused skipping was originally a slave drive in the original machine, and when the main drive died, I repartitioned it and used it as the main drive. Was okay for a while. Then we upgraded the mobo, video card, processor, added a second IDE slave hard drive, etc. and reinstalled XP. THEN it started acting goofy, booting slow, and so on. Perhaps it was the hardware changes, the HDD jumper settings, or that the new motherboard didn't have the same IDE bandwidth budget or something.
Not sure if anything there helps, but comparing your setup to this one could reveal something.
18 - Cole
I unhooked the power to the secondary drive and booted with only the main drive (the one from the external hard drive). Same problem. I went through your steps again, everything set to DMA, I deleted the registry keys you said and restarted, same.
To clarify, the old hard drive came with the computer. XP was installed on it. It worked fine for years then I started having problems with windows so I re-installed it. Thats when trouble started. A few weeks later I took apart the external drive and put that drive in my computer (only that one) and installed XP on it. Everything worked fine so I decided to hook up the old one as a slave. I then deleted all the windows files of the old drive and just left Documents and Settings and Program Files. After a while I noticed the audio was still choppy after changing to the new drive.
Anyway, If you come up with anything then it would be greatly appreciated. I will check back some other time maybe. If not then thanks for your help.
19 - Mark Buckingham
That's odd. If it worked fine prior to that drive being re-introduced to the equation, but is still stuttery without it now, I'm not sure what the problem would be.
I know when I removed the old drive here, I did a secure erase on it before using it again for anything else. Given that it was also booted up again in an entirely different hardware environment, it's hard to say which of those two things would have had a greater effect.
If I come across any other ideas, I'll post them here.
20 - Laurie
I have the same problem, but I'm using Vista and can't complete either fix.
With the first fix, my IDE Channel (there is neither primary or secondary) is set as PIO Mode 4, however, Enable DMA is greyed out (I have separately searched for a solution to this in Vista and have yet to find one).
The 2nd Fix, again, because I'm using Vista, the subkeys in the registry are different. I have 6 keys (0000-0005 & Properties), all but the first say "IDE Channel" under DriverDesc (the first, 0000, is the controller). But there is no DataCheckSum entries or anything that looks like that, so I'm worried to delete anything.
If you have found anything out in Vista, or if anyone else has, I'd greatly appreciate your help!
21 - Mark Buckingham
Hi Laurie. Are you sure your machine has IDE hard drives? I would think most Vista machines would have SATA, the newer replacement for IDE. Also, what kind of video hardware does the system have?
22 - Jimmy
Hey Mark,
Thanks for this article write up.
I'm having this problem as well an I've tried all the tests you've mentioned.
I'm running Vista 64 Bit SP2 with 4 gbs of ram and an Intel Quad Core Processor 2.4 ghz.
I've tried your first solution and was unable to find a primary IDE drive but all my controllers were set to DMA.
For your second solution, I didn't see any DataCheckSum entries.
I have 3 hard drives, all of them SATA and are only about 1-2 years old. I've already defragged, and scanned my hdds for spy and malware so I'm stuck.
The problem seemed to be alleviated for a while when I unplugged my DVD drive but now it has come back.
Got any suggestions?
Thanks
23 - Mark Buckingham
Leave the DVD drive unplugged? :) But seriously, the drives we had the problem on were all IDE, so the diagnosis for SATA drives might be entirely different. The location of the registry entries might also be different in Vista 64, as we were troubleshooting XP 32-bit.
I guess the next question would be whether the DVD drive is also SATA. If all three HDDs and the DVD drive are SATA, they might be interrupting each other or pulling too much power, depending on the rating of the power supply. If the DVD drive is IDE and everything else is SATA, it could be an IDE/motherboard driver issue or something similar.
Just knowing that having the DVD drive unplugged fixes the issue should point you in the right direction. Hope this helps.
24 - Matt
You rock Mark! Step 2, (registry fix) set me straight. Awesome job. Girlfriend had been using my computer for 5 months and brought it to me saying it's slow to boot, doesn't play audio/video without chopping, etc... Runs as good as the day I gave it to her. Thanks again
25 - Jeff
I can't believe this actually worked. I was skeptical, now I'm amazed. Thanks a lot.