exsubdriversdod Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 Problem: When booting, BIOS discovers the CD-RW & DVD. Before the BIOS checking is complete, the system "loses" the CD-RW & DVD. That is, once the BIOS check is completed and I log in, the File Manager does not have the CD-RW (E) and the DVD (E) in the directory tree. Also I can not open the drives by pressing the "open/close" button. The ready light blinks constantly. The problem occurs between the hardware discovery and the RAID check steps.Once in a great while the system does "see" the drives when the BIOS check is complete. In these instances the E & F drives show up in the directory tree, and the "open/close" button works. And normal read-writes are enabled.Motherboard: KG7-RAID (4 months old)BIOS ID: 06/10/2002-761-686B-6A656A1AC-9mProcessor: Athlon M4 (Thunderbird) 650-1.4g 1.7-1.8V256MB memory2 IDE controllersWindows XP Professional, SR1Steps already taken to diagnose the problem.1. Unplugged the CD-RW from IDE-2 and plugged it into IDE-1. Result: system still "loses" it2. Unplugged the CD-RW (all cables), rebooted, power-off, reconnect the CD-RW, reboot. Problem continues to existBefore I update the BIOS to to ABIT's latest BIOS software (always a fun thing), I would like to know if there is any diagnostic I can try to discover why this problem is occuring....exsubdriversdod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scot Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 exsubdriversdod,First, if your nickname means you used to drive subs, I want to hear about that if you care to talk about it. I'm fascinated by submarines.About your problem, I don't have a solution but want some add'l info. How many IDE devices do you have on this PC, and can you name them. How many drive partitions do you have.Just to clarify, while you're still booting, you can see that the drive is no longer recognized? Are you already into Windows? And, how do you know the drive is no longer recognized?Thanks,-- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferrit Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 Sounds like a typical windows xp problem we see on a regular basis. If it was me i would check the aspi layer. That is what drives the cdroms, be they dvd cdrom or cdrw. Forceaspi is one way to do it. Also have you recently installed or removed ezcd or roxio burning software? Forceaspi is avaliable on the net search using google Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 19, 2003 Share Posted March 19, 2003 Have you tried the DVD and the CDRW individually on the system, without the other drive/cable in place? Does it do the same thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perry Posted March 20, 2003 Share Posted March 20, 2003 Another cause of this type problem is flaky/corrupt chip set drivers. Make sure you have the latest drivers for your motherboard's chip set. Some older drivers don't play well with XP and XP's default drivers don't play well with some chip sets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exsubdriversdod Posted March 20, 2003 Author Share Posted March 20, 2003 Thank you for the responses to date. Here is some additional information.I have two hard drives (C and D) connected to IDE controller #1; a CD-RW (E) and DVD (F) connected to IDE controller #2. The CD and DVD are misbehaving on both controllers. There is only 1 partition on C and D.The problem is occuring during the BIOS checking. I know that the BIOS sees the drives because they are shown on the screen during the BIOS session as present. When the process is succesful, all I see is a momentary "blink" of the device light during the BIOS step. When it is not successful the device light "blinks" for as long as the system is up.Once I get to the Windows environment neither E nor F show up in the directory tree of Explorer.I ran ForceASPI with no change in the situation.I do not have roxio installed, and I was using Microsoft's version. If that is ezcd, a search of C: does not show it present. Since I can not see Drive E: I do not see what is the software being used to write to it.I have disconnected the DVD from the system (all 3 cables) and repeated the original tests described in my original post. Nada for the CD-RW. Please bear in mind that, when on a random basis, the system sees the drive after Windows is operational, the CD behaves normally. Consquently I have ruled out the possibility that I have a bad CD-RW. The BIOS software is dated 6-10-2002. The system behaved correctly for two months after replacing the original motherboard with the ABIT KG7-Raid. I have the latest ABIT BIOS software, but have been hesitant to upgrade before understanding what is causing the problem. While I have flashed BIOS many times, it is not without its perils. Hence I was hoping to find a root cause that did not entail updating the BIOS. As a last resort I will do it.I am not using the RAID functionality (why not is another story). One opinion I have from a computer hardware engineer is that this is the root cause. Not totally convinced given that the problem only surfaced after the first two months with the new motherboard. I have tried to figure what changed after the upgrade, but nothing I have done would seem to point to a solution, since the devices "disappear" BEFORE the Windows OS boot sequence begins....exsubdriversdod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scot Posted March 20, 2003 Share Posted March 20, 2003 It would be just a hunch, but I begin to believe the notion of a bad CD-RW too. I'd be interested to know what brand and model of CD-RW drive you have. Over the last two years, I have come across problems like this with CD-RWs, both myself and others. Twice for me, it was a bad CD-RW drive. That was not long after they first came out. But, still, I think this is better than 50% your problem.You say that it worked for two months. Did anything else change around the time it stopped working? Especially hardware or OS related? Or CD-software related. It also acts like there's a potential hardware conflict. It could even be a BIOS setting, such as your Plug & Play BIOS setting in BIOS. I have seen funky hardware things happen when you change that setting.All of my thoughts are guesses. And there are a LOT of other excellent suggestions above. So, take with a grain of salt.But that's my pair of pennies.-- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 21, 2003 Share Posted March 21, 2003 Hmmmm....Just on a fluke ... how do you have the jumpers set on these two drives?Master and Slave (in the appropriate places on the cable) which would be the preferred method, btw ... or ... both set to master, or both set to slave, or one or both set to cable select? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exsubdriversdod Posted March 21, 2003 Author Share Posted March 21, 2003 RE: bad CD-RWFirst of all thanks to all for the information you have provided me to this point. I appreciate the input you have supplied. Some additional information on the system:I have a Micron peecee that I bought new in April of 2001. When I ordered the system I had Windows 2000 Pro installed. The CD-RW that came with the system is a 12x10x32x drive. Do not know the brand at this point.The reason I am at this point is:I was quite happy with W2K and not terribly interested in upgrading to XP. In October of last year I began to experience a video sync problem: the system would not connect the monitor unless I repeatedly boot, shutdown, boot I would know if I was going to see stuff on the screen, other than the "no video sync" box within 4-5 seconds. Consequently I never let the system get beyond the BIOS stage before hitting the power-off button.After several weeks of trying different things, including eliminating a short in the cable and runing Sandra Pro from SI Software, I said "self maybe now is the time to upgrade to XP" So I did. Wrong answer! because the problem persisted. So I took the system to a local computer guy who subjected the system to some fairly rigourous hardware testing using his hardware diagnostic programs. His conclusion was that I had a short somewhere on the motherboard. So we swapped the Micron oem board for the ABIT KG7-RAID [don't ask 8^( ].System behaved beautifully for several weeks. Suddenly the "no video sync" reared its ugly head again. And the CD-RW problem surfaced. I took the system back to the computer guy and he was unable to duplicate either problem.When I brought the system home, I continued to see the problems. After spending time with my computer hardware engineer mentioned in a previous note, we concluded that the most probable cause of the "no video sync" was a short on the video card. We came to this conclusion based upon the fact that as the system warmed up the problem disappeared. So I swapped the existing ATI RagePro video card for an RADEON 7500. I have never experienced the "no video sync" problem since. In retrospect I think that I never had a problem on the motherboard. It was the video card from the get go.So based upon the latest replies, I am thinking about getting a low-cost CD-RW drive to see if that indeed is the problem..../exsubdriversdod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scot Posted March 26, 2003 Share Posted March 26, 2003 Definitely take LilBambi's suggestion to heart before you do that. Your symptoms don't necessarily match have the switches set wrong -- unless you had them both set to cable select and were trying to make the cable connections be the arbiter. One should be master and one should be slave. If not, fix that before anything else. -- Scot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imranj Posted March 28, 2003 Share Posted March 28, 2003 Problem: When booting, BIOS discovers the CD-RW & DVD. Before the BIOS checking is complete, the system "loses" the CD-RW & DVD. That is, once the BIOS check is completed and I log in, the File Manager does not have the CD-RW (E) and the DVD (E) in the directory tree. Also I can not open the drives by pressing the "open/close" button. The ready light blinks constantly. The problem occurs between the hardware discovery and the RAID check steps.Once in a great while the system does "see" the drives when the BIOS check is complete. In these instances the E & F drives show up in the directory tree, and the "open/close" button works. And normal read-writes are enabled.Motherboard: KG7-RAID (4 months old)BIOS ID: 06/10/2002-761-686B-6A656A1AC-9mProcessor: Athlon M4 (Thunderbird) 650-1.4g 1.7-1.8V256MB memory2 IDE controllersWindows XP Professional, SR1Steps already taken to diagnose the problem.1. Unplugged the CD-RW from IDE-2 and plugged it into IDE-1. Result: system still "loses" it2. Unplugged the CD-RW (all cables), rebooted, power-off, reconnect the CD-RW, reboot. Problem continues to existBefore I update the BIOS to to ABIT's latest BIOS software (always a fun thing), I would like to know if there is any diagnostic I can try to discover why this problem is occuring....exsubdriversdodWell i just had this issue, here my side of the storyMy current setup is on primary channel is .....ATA 66 Seagate 20ggb - master that is and on primary slave is LG CDRW...and on secondary channel is Samsung DVDso once i got a hard driver maxtor ultra and for it moved some channels and postions.....move the Primary LG drive to secondary slave and connected the maxtor to primary slave.everything got detected in bois, a relief .booted into xp , every harddisk and optical drive is detected expect for LG cdrw....so what i did was swap their respective postions to primary and secondary slaves i got both of the detected in biosand windows xp....... one note is that primary channel is using ATA class cable...i didnt do any further investigation as the matter is now resolved...so why break everything when its aint broken so why fix it ...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest LilBambi Posted March 28, 2003 Share Posted March 28, 2003 exsubdriversdod --Here's something I just came across from Doug Knox ...XP_CD-DVD-Fix.exe - Restore CD/DVD Drives to ExplorerDoug Knox Website (choose WinXP Fixes)Maybe this will help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jomama Posted March 29, 2003 Share Posted March 29, 2003 I have experienced this loss of hardware thing twice. Once it was with a HP CD RW that refused to work as a 2nd device on either channel, even tho it had a slave jumper. (Later when I read the instructions, they explained that it should be set as Master)The second was a defective CD drive. And that sounds more like what you are experiencing. i.e. blinking active light and door that wont open.Good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BF one Posted April 5, 2003 Share Posted April 5, 2003 I have also intermittently lost my CD and CD burner drives. As a cold reboot has rediscovered them, I moved on to more pressing matters.The machine is a Compaq DeskPro PIII 450 with (2) hard drives on the A IDE channel, and a Kenwood 52X CD-Rom drive and a HP CD-Writer 9500 on the B Channel. The external Zip drive is USB 1.1.Normally all works well, but intermittently both cd drives fall out of Explorer, and will not respond to eject commands etc.I downloaded the Doug Knox tool, but until the glitch re-occurs, I won't be able to test if it helps.Scot - great forum. Unlike most forum access on my satellite link, I am getting rapid screen refreshes without the agonizing waits.Bruce Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sheltonleslie Posted April 5, 2003 Share Posted April 5, 2003 If it always finds the DVD when connected by itself then it more than likely is a bad drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exsubdriversdod Posted April 28, 2003 Author Share Posted April 28, 2003 Dear fellow noters, Sorry for the delay in replying to the suggestion that it was a bad CD-RW. I bought a new CD-RW on Friday and installed it. The problem with the "blinking light" and the tray opening/closing disappeared; but the drive was still not present in FileManager. I tried several cabling options but none seemed to work. Although I noticed in every instance that the CD-RW was identified in the BIOS boot.On Saturday I consulted with a friend and tried several other things. The final thing I tried was to look in DeviceMangler at the Seconday IDE controller. Much to my surprise it was disabled! I enabled it, and voila monsieur, the CD-RW was in the FileManager tree. Since I never disabled the controller, my friend and I concluded that XP must have done the dirty deed after repeated efforts to include it in FM. At some point I may try to attach the old CD-RW as the second drive on the Secondary IDE controller to see if it was truly broke. But for now, since it "aint broke" I am going to enjoy the moment. Given the blinking light and open/close problems, I am inclined to believe that it was a bad CD-RW.Thanks to all for helping me solve this problem....exsubdriversdod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.