well after some study I have learned that device #1 (not #0) on each ide channel is in PIO mode, not dma, that is, the d and e drive. the main c drive is in ultra dma. I did install some new programs recently. how do i get out of slow pio mode for these 2 drives? i had pio mode once before but it was a faulty drive, how can I have 2 at once fail? sounds like a driver/ resource conflict maybe? help thanks fj