External Ultrabay adapter transfer rate with Win2K/XP

[paulchr]

I've been trying to set up a 600x with external Ultrabay adapter with IDE PC Card and have found poor performance with Win2K and XP. IBM apparently doesn't have WinXP driver support for the external Ultrabay (the native XP PnP drivers that install for an Ultrabay 2000 only seem to work...) and the Win2K drivers appear to install OK in XP. The problem is most apparent with XP playing a DVD through the external Ultrabay. The CPU gets pegged at 100% (two models, a PIII-650 and upgraded PIII-850) and the DVD plays only about 1-in-10 frames using either DVDExpress or WinDVD. Plays just fine with the DVD drive plugged back in the 600x internal Ultrabay (~50% CPU or so). Things are better with Win2K with CPU in the 95% range but video is still jerky. Everything is just fine with Win98/Me... Seems like poor driver support -- is anyone able to get good performance with the external Ultrabay using Win2K or XP? Any tweaks possible? I wanted this setup for playing DVDs on trips with external DVD and internal Ultrabay battery. Might have to dual boot as a last resort.

[whizkid]

If you own the DVDs (as opposed to renting while travelling), you can rip them to your hard drive and watch them that way.

Sorry it's no help with your current issue, but it could be a work-around.