Thanks to your post I found the Memorex DVD in the Device Mgr... indeed it was connected to that Secondary IDE Channel and it's still reporting PIO mode even though I selected "DMA if available". Guess it's not available. But I haven't checked to see if there are any new drivers for that drive, which I will try to do yet.

I went ahead and bought an LG drive tonight, and installed Alice: Madness Returns. Took exactly 15minutes flat from beginning to end of install! Unlike either of the other games I mentioned above, I could clearly hear that Alice was "spinning up to high speed" during most of the installation. That never happened with Batman or HOMM6 on the old Memorex.

The LG drive is reporting "Ultra DMA Mode 5", which I take it is a good thing. :)

UPDATE: I did a little searching for Memorex drivers, and now I remember I tried to find drivers for this DVD burner before... and couldn't. Memorex apparently "disowned" their DVD drives and don't even recognize (on their site) my drive at all. So I can't get drivers specifically for this device. Bah, good riddance... the LG works great and was only $35.

I was talking about chipset drivers (can be found on mainboard manufacturer site).

Hmm...if you already bought a new drive than your problems are gone but the question is: was your old Memorex really broken and was it necessary to spend cash on a new one :-)

Update:
Still it's $35 - you could buy some GOGs for that. Also from environmental reasons I always put much effort in 'reviving' my old equipment instead of just buying new one.

Since the OP's problem is solved I hope I can hijack his thread and aks for help with my DVD drive also. Granted this issue has been going on for all 4 years I have had this PC so...

The issue is that my dvd-drive also takes a very long time to install games (30-45 minutes) and it often makes some rather loud "scratchy" noises when installing and other times it sounds like the drive has stopped installing but hasn't. It does install all games and it doesn't damage the DVD and once installed the game playes perfectly. But the loud noise and the slow install speed is annoying so if anyone has a fix I'm all ears.

Core i7 but WXP and IDE devices?!?

that's like fighting a contemporary war with muskets.

Even the musket didn't die overnight. :) I rarely upgrade my peripherals when I upgrade to a new mobo, unless absolutely necessary (e.g. video cards). My system evolves slowly but slowly, and has a healthy variety of IDE and SATA. Until, as you see here, the old becomes unfit and is eventually replaced. I have Win7 in the house, but not on this gaming rig, and am in absolutely no hurry whatsoever to upgrade.


They are up to date, thanks.