Old PC - Problem to setup DMA with ALi M1671 ALADDiN-P4 chipset

[KinoisLbv]

Hi,

I need your help for allowing Win7 to operate 160 Gb IDE HDD in UDMA mode.

My Notebook HP Omnibook xe4500 is 8 years old with a recent HDD :
- CPU: P4 on ALi M1671 ALADDiN-P4 chipset
- RAM: 1152 Mb (128 Mb SDR 133 + 1024 Mb DDR 266)
- HDD: 160 Gb (Samsung HM160HC)
- Video : ATI Mobility Radeon AGP - M6 Mobility
- Audio : Ali M5451
- DVD/RW: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SN-S082H

I have installed Win7 Ultimate from the scratch because processing from Win XP SP3 has always blocked and never finished. Before PC was worked fine with XP.
But Win7 is working very very slowly because 160 Gb IDE HDD is driven by ATA CHANNEL 0 (atapi.sys and atapiport.sys) controller is in PIO 4 mode instead of UDMA mode (5 or 6), this is keeping the CPU always busy and the PC unavailable for any task.

Therefore the DVD/RW driver is on ATA CHANNEL 1 and set without problem to UDMA 2 by Win7.

Within that IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller section, there is a third controller ULi M5229 PCI MASTER IDE.

For information, HDD is seen by the bios (M1.94 last from HP) as a 137 Gb disc (maximal capacity allowed by that bios).

Program 4008.exe allows Win XP tomanage IDE HDD with a capacity beyond 137 Gb by installing SCSI/RAID Host Controller with another IDE controller , Ali Ultra IDE (alihdd.sys), both allow to pilot that IDE HDD as a scsi device and walking around 137 Gb limitation.

But installation of 4008.exe in Win7 hangs system by giving a blue screen on each required restart with that message error : 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x85A3CD40, 0x85A3CEAC, 0x82E287B0).

I need your support for allowing Win7 to setup 160 Gb IDE HDD in UDMA mode and having that PC up running Win7 well even its age.

 

[KinoisLbv]

Hi,

Without answer from someone, I walk around that bios limitation issue by following recommendation from Review of the Samsung HM160HC, World's Fastest ATA/IDE Mobile hard drive - Page 4 and down sizing the 160 Gb disk to 137 Gb by using Samsung ESTOOL.
Windows 7 is now running fine on my old HP Omnibook xe4500 which can be used again for a while.