Some rant

[Paulaner]

[rant on]

Sorry to annoy you all, but I really need to give vent to my anger.

So I found the dreaded Starforce on my system (I don't know which game installed it)
So I found that my dvd burner was stuck to PIO mode instead of the regular DMA (slower, less reliable, crappy, almost useless)
So I found that Starforce was the cause for all this mess, while I was thinking about buying a new DVD/RW unit.
So I removed Starforce, I removed and resintalled the affected IDE channel and all is working fine again.

So... f**** you Starforce!!

[rant off]

 

[DigiQ8]

Wait a sec...do you mean thats why my DVD\RW unit got crappy and I had to buy a new one?

 

[Paulaner]

Wait a sec...do you mean thats why my DVD\RW unit got crappy and I had to buy a new one?

That was my case. Starforce changed the transfer mode of my dvd/rw unit to PIO instead of DMA (it is a well documented behaviour, just google for it). Manually setting it back to DMA didn't work. I had to remove Starforce and uninstall the IDE channel of the affected dvd unit (windows will reinstall it again from scratch after a reboot) and all is fine again.

 

[99.vikram]

Holy crap, I peed mah pants! So much hate!

 

[Paulaner]

Holy crap, I peed mah pants! So much hate!

Oh yes. I will soon turn green...

 

[soulslicer]

Which is suppose to be worse? Stareforce, Securom or SafeDisc? These are utterly useless anyway.

 

[RyanG]

Probably SecuROM... supposedly you have to insert the disc and verify your copy online every 10 days or some shit...
It was originally announced to be included in Spore and Mass Effect PC but the public outcry sniped it from several hundred yards.

 

[VirusType2]

Manually setting it back to DMA didn't work. I had to remove Starforce and uninstall the IDE channel of the affected dvd unit (windows will reinstall it again from scratch after a reboot) and all is fine again.

I wonder if this affects SATA as well as IDE? If so, I'll have to check into this. I've removed Starforce several times in the past but never did anything like you mention.

I sold my IDE DVD burner though and got a SATA one. I didn't notice any difference in speed between the two tbh.

Once when I installed some program, I got a message saying I was using the slower mode before, and it says it switched it to fast mode (Direct Memory Access) [DMA] - but from what you are saying, that's not good enough.

 

[Paulaner]

Once when I installed some program, I got a message saying I was using the slower mode before, and it says it switched it to fast mode (Direct Memory Access) [DMA] - but from what you are saying, that's not good enough.

You can manually set back the ide channel to "use dma if available", but in my case this was not good enough, because the transfer mode was stuck to pio. Let me quote a forum:

Starforce will allegedly over time sometimes cause optical drives to "step down" to PIO mode, which at the very best degrades their performance, and at the very worst can cause longer-term problems. There's also apparently some potential security exploits from it having such base rootkit-level access to things, but they apparently haven't been hit yet.

Also, the company's idea of good public relations hasn't quite yet moved to the level of stabbing puppies in the eyes, but give them a year or two more. Baby steps.

If you've had it on your system for awhile, you can check your drives' status by going to device manager, drilling down to your IDE/ATAPI devices listing, right clicking on the primary and secondary IDE channels and going into properties/advanced properties. The mode should be DMA. If so, rejoice! It hasn't harmed you. (Following geoff.'s advice is still sound, because if nothing else, even the potential is a good thing to avoid. Plus, if your organizational skills are like mine, finding a cd can be a hassle sometimes, and what gamer has the attention span for that? )

If it has been switched to PIO, the easiest way to get things working again is to uninstall the primary and secondary IDE channels and then reboot. Windows should redetect properly on boot-up, and they'll be in DMA again.

Again, it's easiest to simply never let it get to that point by keeping it off your system. It's a low-percentage chance, but who needs it?

 

[Adabiviak]

I use a SATA DVD burner, and know I have those things installed on my system. There doesn't seem to be a setting for DMA/PIO though?