A month ago I did a fresh install of Windows XP on a fairly fast Core i7 PC. The first game I installed was Batman Arkham City. I kid you not... this game took so long to install from DVD that I literally had to let it install overnight... mostly because after a solid hour I got tired of waiting for it to finish. The game ran smooth as glass and I didn't have any problems at all running it. BTW, just finished the game... what a remarkable artistic achievement this (and the original) Batman are. But I digress.

So tonight I'm installing Might & Magic Heroes VI, and... pretty much the same thing. It's been exactly 30 minutes and the game is only 1/3rd installed so far.... so easily a 1.5 hour install. This is insane! I know my drive isn't broken and I don't have any problems playing games from it. But is this normal? Are game DVDs using some kind of super-secret hard-to-read DRM crap that DVD drives can't read? It's not the greatest DVD drive in the world (I think it's a Memorex internal) but I can't imagine it's wearing out. The drive isn't even making any noise right now... that is, it's not spinning at 24x or some high-speed revolutions AT ALL. It's like the installation has forced the drive into some kind of super slow-mo mode.

When I play games, it'll spinup to the normal highspeed whirring you hear while games do their drive checks. But during installs? Slower than 3 rocks. Just want to get some idea of whether this is normal and par for the course these days, or do I need a new drive. What are your experiences?

Could this be somehow related to the infamous Starforce DRM? Didn't it try to install all kinds of crap that could slow down a DVD-RW drive, or even make it unusable?

Just off the top of my head, I haven't faced such problems myself, but then I've tried to avoid games with Starforce the best I can. I suggest you at least google for it, and look for some Starforce uninstallers, if there are such.

EDIT: See here (googling with keywords: starforce dvd slow):

http://www.google.fi/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=fi&source=hp&q=starforce%20dvd%20slow&pbx=1&oq=starforce%20dvd&aq=3vL&aqi=g-vL4&aql=&gs_sm=11&gs_upl=0l0l1l686l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=d24817bf517e78f2&biw=1099&bih=512&pf=p&pdl=300

Device manager - check DVD drive mode. Shoud be "DMA sth" not PIO. If it's not - remove device and restart

EDIT: I also have an XP + LG DVD/CD drive. From to time it just swiches from DMA to PIO mode without any apparent reason. If that is your case I can guide you step by step once I'll put my kids to bed - 21 pm CET.

Boy, am I glad I ditched retail ...

Why why would you do this!?!?

That could be a potential sign of hard drive or DVD drive failure, happened to me a few years back, set an install away before I went to work and it was just finishing up when I got back in 6 hours later. Within the next day or so my primary hard disc died on me.

Try doing a full scandisk and defrag on your hard drive overnight and see if you get any errors showing on the drive from the scandisk.

I would also check your bios on startup to make sure that the Hard Drive & DVD drive are set to DMA mode (Ultra DMA). Occasionally your bios can reset itself if you get a power cut or spike, also you do need to replace the bios battery that is on the motherboard now and again, if the battery has died it wont hold your bios settings. Change the battery if your bios keeps resetting basically.

Just a few things to try out there to start with.

Next up I would suggest changing the port on the motherboard the DVD drive is connected to. but try the other stuff first.

DVD drive trouble I guess. Eh, but first thing you should try: Check if the DVD drive is properly connected to the MOBO.

Also, install Windows 7. It won't help with this, but it'll help with a lot of other stuff.

I do recall the OP asking for help and not asking for another snide comment about physical media.

I spent the best part of three hours trying to download the Gobliiins pack yesterday with aborted downloads because of a dodgy internet connection.

"Boy, am I glad I went back to retail."

GOG isn't better either... Sometimes I have to wait 5-10 minutes for a game to be installed. Windows 7 takes 25 minutes here. :/

Some great suggestions here, thanks everyone!

I checked my IDE controllers... 5 out of 6 were set to "DMA if available". Only the 3rd Secondary IDE channel was set to PIO mode. But I don't know which channel the DVD is connected to... possibly that one I might assume. So I changed it to DMA and I guess I'll have to wait for my next installation to see if it helps.

Because Batman and HOMM6 are the only 2 games I've installed on this fresh XP install, unless one of those use Starforce I don't think that's the problem. I checked the "hidden" drivers in the Device Manager, and Starforce is not listed. But maybe there is something else slowing it down? Dunno.

I do have another (external) USB DVD drive. It's newer than the Memorex internal... it's an LG. I didn't think to try an external drive, but I might do that next time I get a slow install. I may just need to buy a new drive.

Any suggestions for a fast internal DVD driver/burner?

If you had this channel set to PIO 99% it WAS DVD's channel and by changing it to DMA (should be 4) your problems should be gone.
Possible that one of those installs messes these DMA/PIO modes.
One more check to be sure - see what mode is set for DVD in BIOS.

Another thing you could try is make sure you have the latest motherboard chipset drivers installed. Get them directly from the board manufacturers site.

same... took me 1 hours and 43 minutes to install the witcher from GOG...

I changed it to DMA mode, rebooted and it still said Current Transfer Mode was PIO... so I guess this drive won't do DMA? So I bought a new LG GH24 24x SATA DVD burner today. Hopefully it'll run faster...