What's all this about DMA?

DMA, if on, can greatly speed up communications between your PC and its hard drive and DVD/CD drives.

The following assumes your hard drive is on the primary channel and the CD/DVD drive is on the secondary.

To check if it is on:

1. Right click on My Computer
2. Select Properties
3. Click on Hardware
4. Click on Device Manager
5. Double click on IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
6. Double click on Primary channel
7. Click Advanced Settings and check it says DMA if available and is set to Ultra DMA, mode 5.
8. Do the same for the secondary channel -- it should be Ultra DMA, mode 2.

Don't worry if it says "Not applicable" - it means there is no device connected to that port.

The following diagram shows my primary channel (I have 2 hard drives connected):

If your PC doesn't have DMA enabled, the easiest way to re-enable it is to remove the channel and reboot. Windows will then automatically reinstall it and reset the counters that deactivated DMA in the first place.

To remove the channel:

1. Right click on the relevant channel in Device Manager (you know how to get there - follow steps 1 thru 5 above 
2. Click on uninstall
3. Reboot
4. When you have rebooted (and the drive and been recognised by Windows again), go back to Device Manager and change the setting to DMA if available.
5. Windows NT/2000 users reboot again. XP users, you're good to go.

Creating Windows Freedb Database

Windows database:

freedb-win-20061101

data size: 2.00 GB
size on disk: 2.01 GB

2.729 files in 11 directories

File system: NTFS
cluster size: 4 kB



How to install and update the freedb database:


Windows systems:


1) base file: freedb-win-[date].rar (possibly also available in other compression formats like .7z )

2) update file(s): freedb-update-[newer date].tar.bz2

[newer date]:

The period specified here
has to begin just before or on the same date of the base file (has to include it)
or has to begin maximum one day later (has to be a continuation of it).

3) tool: freedb-updater_v0.33-setup.exe (has to be installed)

4) Decompress the .RAR-file from 1) to a directory of your choice

5) Start freedb - Windows Database Updater v0.33 and select the freedb-win-[date] directory.
Then select the .TAR.BZ2 file from 2)
Press "Start ..."
Wait a few (or more) minutes until all is done.

23 ways to speed up windows XP

Since defragging the disk won't do much to improve Windows XP performance, here are 23 suggestions that will. Each can enhance the performance and reliability of your customers' PCs. Best of all, most of them will cost you nothing.

1.) To decrease a system's boot time and increase system performance, use the money you save by not buying defragmentation software -- the built-in Windows defragmenter works just fine -- and instead equip the computer with an Ultra-133 or Serial ATA hard drive with 8-MB cache buffer.

2.) If a PC has less than 512 MB of RAM, add more memory. This is a relatively inexpensive and easy upgrade that can dramatically improve system performance.

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How to Back up Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird

Firefox and Thunderbird Firefox users need to back up regularly to guard against the possibility that their profile gets corrupted or wiped after installing a new extension or a new version of Firefox. If you use Thunderbird then it's even more important that you back up to ensure you don't accidentally lose your email correspondence and account settings.

There are two ways to back up: use a backup utility or do it yourself manually.

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How to check your DMA status & reset it if necessary

Explanation of DMA:

DMA is an abbreviation for Direct Memory Access, an access method for external devices where the data transfer is not done by the central processor, but by a small special processor called DMA controller. It uses a procedure called cycle stealing, where the central processor memory access cycles are delayed for very short times to intersperse DMA controller memory access cycles. Some newer, faster DMA modes are called UDMA (Ultra DMA).

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