XP - Getting the system to redetect UDMA transfer rates

[Hodgkinson]

Hi there,
I've recently been shuffling some drives around in my 1Ghz XP tower and it would seem like XP now only wants to access the main HDD at a paltry mode 3, even though the BIOS flags the drive up at mode 4. At this point in time all I have on the system is the one HDD (Connected via a high-speed IDE cable) and floppies A: and B: - All the CD's and other IDE devices are disconnected and the second IDE chain cable removed completely from the mobo.

I seem to remember somewhere about some registry hack to make the system redetect the UDMA speeds, but I can't remember for the life of me where it is.

Any ideas folks?
(This is my main PC so with it in bits im kinda stuck at the minute...)

Thanks,
Hodgkinson.

[Hodgkinson]

Yup, all IDE cables are 80 conductor.

[Hodgkinson]

Well, I buggered around in the registry and tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers (That is, Microsofts own drivers); as well as reconnecting the drives one by one (In the correct places, setting all drives to master or slave only…) and nothing seems to of helped.

I’m now hearing from the guy who gave me the board that it might only support up to UDMA3 (Yuck) and up to 137GB HDDs (That explains why it trashed my brand new Hitachi 160GB drive...Sigh...).

I’m now downloading the drivers for the board from the manufacturers’ website...At 7KB/Sec on broadband...zzzzzz...Might be here a while...

Also, there are no registry "hacks"--just documented and undocumented values. The registry isn't a mystical land off the edge of the map, beyond which there be dragons. It's just a big set of binary INI files that support multiple data types and access control.  

I can assure you that there are dragons out there - They have a habit of eating your system and turning it into fire whenever you make a mistake...Apparently... :-) :flame:

Thanks,
Hodgkinson.

EDIT: I've not tried everything yet...