Okay, I've seen this problem posted several times and it always gets the same advice, of which I've tried.

New rig. Everything working fine...almost. Anytime I use my optical drive(s) my computer struggles with everything, like its dying from juvenile arthritis. I can't watch videos from discs cuz the sound and video skips. If 'explorer' is reading from a disc then audio, video, mouse and just about every task is seriously hindered. Burning takes several times longer then its supposed to. Also, the drives are effin loud like they're floppy drives. Odd thing though, I can play Battlefield 2 fine.

The drives work fine in other comps. The problem occurs with one or two optical drives on the sole IDE cable. I'm pretty sure I've updated the drivers all well and good. I've tried a different cable. I have 600W and 18A on my 12v rail. I have 2 gigs of ram. 1 SATA hard drive. A shiney black case. I'm not running any peripherals or overclocking. I have a MSI P965 Platinum with unupdated bios, and I've seen 2 people post this same problem with this mobo.

The advice I've read is to uninstall the IDE controllers and/or the drives from device manager, which I've done. One of the three secondary controllers said it was running in 'PIO only' mode and I selected 'DMA if available'. No go. I uninstalled the controllers and drives. Upon reboot it resorts to PIO mode for that same controller. I uninstalled the JMicron IDE controller drivers, tried generic Windoes ones and installed the latest JMicron ones. I installed the latest drivers for my chipset. Nothing. I looked in bios and found nothing I thought could help me.

Do I need to update bios or some firmware? I'd rather not. Is my mobo defective?, cuz god that would suck. Am I not doing the right uninstall/reboot thing with these controller drivers? Also, when I boot up, it always gives me the JMicron splash screen listing my optical drives, even when I tried the generic windows IDE controllers. Can I somehow bypass this JMicron business? Can I run a diagnotic on my mobo to see if all the controllers are working? What else before I try reinstalling windows and then concluding its my mobo being a jerk that needs to go back to the Jerk Store?

PLEASE HELP AND THANK YOU

I had the same problem until BIOS rev 1.2 came out which updated the J-micron controller's firmware to use UDMA instead of PIO.

First, make sure your BIOS rev is at least 1.2. If it's not, update to the current version which is v1.4. That should be all you have to do. If you already have at least v1.2, you can do a work around by downloading the RAID drivers for the J-micron controller; it will make windows see the controller as a SCSI device which will fix the speed problem. This is what I did until rev 1.2 was released. You could, of course, get SATA optical drives as well.

How this problem made it to production to begin with is beyond me...

-G

Thanks carver
Why do you not recommend your MSI P965 Platinum?

I go into bios and it says v.02.61, does that sound that right?...how do I check what revision I have?

Not sure what that number is for. Probably the easiest way to check your rev. would be to download CPUZ- it will tell you on the mainboard tab.

I don't recommend the board because it is not the best for overclocking. But it has been rock solid which is more important IMO. I'll change my sig...

thanks again.

It says I have rev 1.1, so where do I get the latest bios update. Does it have to be mobo specific?, Is there anything I need to know about installing it to prevent my computer from being irreversably messed up?

edit: okay i found it from the MSI website. The documentaion says to make a floppy boot disc. I don't have a floppy drive. Is there an alternative?

You can install their live update software (also on the website). It will let you run the BIOS update through Windows.

Updating the BIOS has always been an "at your own risk" venture but it is generally safe if you follow the directions.

it woudnl't let me download live update. It says i don't have "permission to acces this server". I don't have pop ups blocked and tried 3 different browsers. so i got it off my mobo driver disc, ran it, then it updated to the latest liveupdate...and i flashed my bios. seemed to go okay.

when it restarted, it said "cmos checksum bad", and it gave me the option to enter setup or load default settings and start. Upon load up it detected all my controllers and installed them righteo, then it detected some misc PCI device, and couldn't install it. I restarted and got the same checksum bad msg, and it detected the PCI device again and couldn't install it.

I then shutdown, (as opposed to just restarting), then booted up and i don't get the checksum msg anymore. but everytime i boot it detects this misc PCI device and can't install it. no idea whats going on. i uninstalled it from device manager and it still comes back. it no longer lists Jmicron in device manager. it just says 'standard duel cannel pci ide controller'

{b]My drive works fine now.[/b] so i guess that part worked, well sort of, it still seems a wee bit laggy, i dunno if i'm just being insane by now.

i don't know how to get rid of this PCI nonsense, should i reinstall my pci devices?...even though they are working fine, should i somehow restore my bios and try again. should i reinstall JMicron drivers? what the hell is checksum?.....whatever....sorry for being so long winded, i'm out of breath now.

anyways, thank you so much for your patient help carver, i can now finally watch dvds on my $1500 purchase, if you were a sheep, I would marry you

Good that you got the BIOS update installed.

The 'cmos checksum bad' message is common after a BIOS upgrade, so don't worry about it. It will usually go away if you go into the BIOS and set the date/time, or Windows will do that for you the first time you boot into it.

If the drive still seems laggy, make sure it is now using UDMA. If so, that's the optimal setting and the best it's going to get.

My MSI P965 also came with rev 1.1 installed and I don't remember getting any screens regarding new hardware after updating the BIOS. All I can suggest is downloading the chipset software from Intel's or MSI's website and running that again.

You're welcome for the help; I know personally that this is an annoying problem!

-G

there is one option in the bios that you can enable bus mastering, that seems to improve the speed