.png?width=100&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "Picture of John Savill")
.png?width=400&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale "John Savill")
Sign up for the ITPro Today newsletter
Stay on top of the IT universe with commentary, news analysis, how-to's, and tips delivered to your inbox daily.
How do I enable Bus Mastering in Windows NT?
John Savill
January 8, 2000
1 Min Read
A. Windows NT 4.0 has native bus mastering support with Service Pack3. To enable bus mastering in Windows NT 4.0 perform the following:
Ensure you have Service Pack 3 installed and you have the Service Pack 3CD-ROM
Run the DMACHECK.EXE utility in supportutilsi386 directory of the CD-ROMor download fromhttp://support.microsoft.com/download/support/mslfiles/Dmachcki.exe.
When DMACHECK.EXE is run, it will indicate whether DMA is enabled on eitherIDE channel. Click on the Enabled radio button to enable DMA for each drive andany other DMA-capable devices in the system.
Reboot the system.
Execute the DMACHECK utility again to check that DMA was enabled.
If the drive is DMA-capable and DMA is not enabled at this point, thisfailure must be corrected before proceeding
The DMACheck util uses a registry setting - 0 is for disabled, 1 is forenabled, but if you enter 2 as the setting it will force NT to use DMA if thehardware supports it. You may get better performance from drivers supplied withthe motherboard rather than the DMACHECK.
So Intel and Microsoft do officially support DMACHECK. See also
DMACHECK.EXE IDE BusMaster is very important : you can read or write on diskwithout using 100% of CPU (like SCSI)
About the Author
You May Also Like
.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)