big troubles with PIO Mode 4 and CMOS

[anothabrotha]

hey all, is there anyone that could help me out with a problem I'm having with my computer regarding the problem mentioned in the subject?

I was reading in the forums and I noticed someone suggesting changing the PIO mode to level 4. I've been having problems with my burner, so I decided to try doing that in the CMOS settings, even though I really don't have a clue how those settings work. BIG MISTAKE.

I went in to the Integrated Peripherals menu, then changed the Primay Master PIO, Primary Slave PIO, Secondary Master PIO, and Secondary Slave PIO levels to Mode4. Then I started up the comp, and things started to go wrong.

After the Win98 screen loaded, and was ABOUT to bring up my wallpaper, icons, etc. the harddrive light started flickering at a very constant and slow rate. Then it took forever for anything to load. The problem didn't stop there. The hard drive kept working constantly, and everything took years to open up. Even the mouse had troubles scrolling.

I manually reset the computer with the reset button, went back in to CMOS and restored all the factory defaults, and things STILL don't work. It acts the same way as if I set the PIO mode to level 4. Everything loads after like 8 minutes, and doing ANYTHING takes forever... clicking the START menu, selecting an icon... even moving my mouse!

Does anyone have any idea what happened and what I should do? I will be bringing in my computer in to the store to get it checked out, but I don't know when that will be, and I'd like some relief before then because I'm simply dying here thinking about what information I could have lost on my hard drive. Thats my biggest concern. Is it possible that my hard drive is damaged even though I never tampered with any hardware?

Thanks a lot everyone.

[dodecahedron]

i would suggest setting the hard drive(s) (presumably primary master for the OS hard drive) to UDMA mode in BIOS. do it manually, don't rely on restoring BIOS defaults. make sure the hard drives are on UDMA mode.
after getting into windows, go to the device manager, and make sure DMA is on for the hard drive(s). i think in win98 this means goint into the device manager (right click on my computer -> properties -> device manager tab) and double click on the hard drive(s) listed there (i'm not sure about these instructions, i don't have win98. if they are'nt exactly right, play around with the stuff till you find it). you should see a checkbox marked DMA or Direct Memory Access or something like that, make sure it is on for the hard drives.

your mistake was to switch to PIO mode not for the CDRW drive only but for the hard drive too, big mistake...
good luck.

by the way:
questions like these should probably go to the General Hardware forum, not here. and most definitely, don't post multiple times, please.

[anothabrotha]

hahaha i was desperate for (instant) help, and didn't know which forum my topic belonged in. I didn't think it was hardware, b/c I didn't fool around with any hardware.

I'll try out your suggestion.

Thanks again.

btw, is it possible that the hard drive could have been damaged like this?

[dodecahedron]

hahaha i was desperate for (instant) help, and didn't know which forum my topic belonged in. I didn't think it was hardware, b/c I didn't fool around with any hardware.

no problem, just a friendly suggestion .

btw, is it possible that the hard drive could have been damaged like this?

i seriously doubt it. all these transfer modes are backwards compatible, your ATA hard drive is backward compatible with slower, older transfer protocols.