Very Nice! Hope that works for him.

Really? Uninstall the IDE ATA/ATAPI CRONTROLER? I have 3 devices there:
1 - Nvidia nforce4 parallel ATA controller. Here I have a 250 gig Maxtor ( as slave) and a dvd burner (as master)
2 - Nvidia nforce4 serial ATA controller
3 - Nvidia nforce4 serial ATA controller

Should I do it to them all? Won't that make the system crash? Won't I lose information? Can anything bad happen? I really hope it works though. BTW, when I open the 250 gig Maxtor properties the following options are marked:
- Let bios select the transfer mode (multi-word DMA2)
- Enable read caching
- Enable write caching

When I unlick the "Let bios select the transfer mode", the place where it says "multi-word DMA2" allows me to choose a bunch of other options. And when I did a speed test the results were:
- Theoretical limit 16.6
- Burst speed 3.2
- Sustained speed 3.2

I really don't know if this is bad or good, but I'm guessing it's bad and I'm guessing THIS is where the problem is, because the other Maxtor speed test resulted in:
- Theoretical limit 150.0
- Burst speed 120.5.
- Sustained speed 61.7

Any thoughts?

Oh yes! Finaly! Sweet! I changed the Tranfer mode to "Ultra DMA 6 - Ultra 133". I don't even know if this is the best options that'll make the HD go faster. All I know is that now I can preview HDV real time, baby!!! Thank you, guys! Thank you!!! You saved me a lot of money in RAM, GHZ, new graphic card. Thank you!

Joy
 

and that's the kind of response we love to see here... another happy ending. :-)