To enable DMA in Windows 9x or ME, right-click on My Computer and select Properties. Select the Device Manager tab. Under Disk Drives and CD-ROM Drives, double-click every device that is present and turn on the DMA checkbox. When you close the Device Manager, Windows will ask you to restart your system. Once Windows has loaded again, go back into Device Manager and check the status of your devices. If DMA has been turned off, the device does not support DMA transfers (a Zip-100 drive for instance).
In Windows 2000, the process is slightly different. Instead of enabling DMA on the device, you enable it on the IDE channel the device sits on. Again, go into Device Manger by right-clicking on My Computer. Select the Hardware tab and then click Device Manger (why there is an extra step in the process I do not know…). Under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, right click on the primary and secondary IDE channels and select properties. On the Advance Settings tab, you will see a section for Devices 0 and 1. Set the transfer modes to be “DMA if available” for all of your devices because even if you have a device that does not support DMA transfers, it will run in PIO mode anyway.
If your system seems sluggish or is taking a long time to boot up, check to make sure DMA mode transfers are enabled for all of your devices. And, while your at it, check your system’s BIOS and confirm that the correct DMA setting is enabled for each device there, too.
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