Hard Drive Keeps Going Back to PIO

Hi, I noticed my computer was slow and when I checked my settings in Device Manager for my IDE Controller for my HD I found it was at PIO, But DMA if Available was selcted. I know if XP gets 6 read/write errors it will revert back to PIO. I uninstalled the Primary IDE Channel that was effected and restarted. It came back up and reinstalled the channel and eveything was back to UDMA6, however after a few minutes I noticed the HD light was lit up and the drive was thrashing around like crazy after it settled down I check the settings again and it had gone back to PIO. I tried the uninstall trick again, restarted and it reinstalled everything again and it asked me to reboot again. After reboot it went back to PIO. The drive is a Seagate 500GB SATA drive and is brand new. I'm running Win XP Pro with a MA790X-UD4 MB with 4GB RAM.

Any ideas? Is the drive going?
Thanks in Advance.
Dave

I'd say the drive may be having problems. Download SeaTools and run the diagnostics to check it out.

You could try changing the IDE cable too, as cable faults can cause that to happen.

Quote:

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"You could try changing the IDE cable too, as cable faults can cause that to happen. "

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Even if its SATA?
Dave

Oops, sorry I missed that it was a SATA drive :o Then again, I've had more issues with SATA cables than I ever had with IDE. If you have a spare cable it certainly wouldn't hurt to change it.

Just to update this. I brought the computer (just the tower) to my house and plugged it in.
Uninstalled the Primary IDE Controller that was having the problem.
Everything rebooted and reinstalled the controller and asked to reboot again.
Everyhthing has been working fine for 4 hours now. I've run all kinds of programs and put it through its paces but it won't go back to PIO.
So is it something at his house. Bad printer driver? He has a dock for his camera, bad driver there maybe. Besides the speakers and KB & mouse and screen there is nothing else on his computer.
He told me he has a filter built in to his house to stop power spikes, but I can't see that being the cause, since he's owned other computers with no problem.

Any Ideas??
Thanks in Advance
Dave

When you take it back, have wait a day between attaching thing back to the computer.
That should point out if the printer, etc., might be causing the problem.

Then again, you just might have fixed things.

Its got to be a USB problem.
When I plug my stick into the front usb no problem as soon as I plug it into the back ones the computer freezes. Even after I pull it out it is still frozen.
Then there is a bunch of warnings and errors in the Event Viewer about paging errors and controller error on the HD.

I tried uninstalling the USB ports and rebooting but the same effect.

Any more ideas. Does the MB need replacing, bad USB ports??

Dave

OK try to stay with me here:
I moved the plug that attaches the front USB ports to the MB to a different USB socket on the MB. There is 2 marked F_USB. Then when I plugged my stick in the front it freezes.
I completeley unplugged the front ports from the MB and tried plugging things in the back.
No problem everything worked fine.
Could it be a bad plug for the front or not wired properly?
I'm going to take it back to him with the front unplugged and see what happens. Hopefully he doesn't need his front USB ports.

Dave

Sounds like damaged front ports alright.

I use a extension cord to get to one of my rear USB ports.

Now here is something weird. I plugged the front usb ports back in and everything is working just fine. I've transferred files back and forth to the HD using the front and back ports and it went just like new.

Weird!!
I did wiggle the wires around a bit on the plug for the front usb before plugging it back in. Loose wire, bad connection??

Everything is fine now, I'll take it back tomorrow and see what happens.

Dave

I guess my question is:
If the computer was trying to print and the USB ports were acting up would it make the HD go PIO. We were trying to print something a couple times when it baffed out. I guess if it couldn't read the file from the HD it would get an error.
Is that right??

Or a bad connection that was fixed by the unplugging and reconnecting the wires.

Seen that fix a lot of things in a computer over the last 10 years.

USB traffic and HD traffic all goes through the Southbridge chip, and what affects one system certainly can affect the other, I've seen it before. That was a good bit of detection work on your part, Lonewolf :)