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I use a system with Celeron 1Mhz and 128 MB RAM. I have an LG CD writer. Everytime I try writing on the CD, I get a message "To improve your system performance we suggest you to enable DMA for all drives" and also a message saying "virtual memory is low." Should I switch to DMA mode? Please suggest a solution.

G. Pavan

Direct memory access (DMA) is a system by which memory can be accessed directly by a device without using the CPU.

Memory can be moved from one location or region to another memory location or region without the monitoring of the CPU. DMA reduces CPU overhead by providing a mechanism for data transfers that do not require monitoring by the CPU. The benefit is speed and performance.

While it is limited in its flexibility, there are many situations where automated memory access is much faster than using the CPU to manage the transfers.

The DMA can be configured to handle moving the collected data out of the peripheral module and into more useful memory locations (such as arrays). By default, Windows 98 and above use DMA if it is available. There are some scenarios where PIO (Programmed input/Output) is preferred. Ideally, one ought to select an option that suits the operating system (OS) on one's PC. However, if you would like to switch to DMA mode, you can do it in the "Device Manager" under the IDE Controllers node. Please right-click on the IDE Channel to which you want to switch, click on properties -{gt} Advanced and change the DMA mode and click OK. If there is a problem, you can always switch back the DMA mode in the Safe Mode. Also see that you have at least 300 MB of free space in your system partition i.e where your Windows is installed, the free space should be at lease double the size of the installed RAM.

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in

if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using a computer.

Solution by G. Rajah

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