CD drives giving problems

[Masterfinn 0]

Im having problems with my two cd drives. ones a dvd drive and the other a cd burner.

I was just doing normal stuff on my computer nothing at all really then when i just went to put a cd in nothing happened. So i went into windows explorer to see if i could read the disk and my drives dont appear. When i go in my device manager they both have yellow question marks on them. One error says "the drivers were loaded but couldnt find the divice" and the other says "there is a configeration problem in registery and is damaged or incomplete". They are recognized on boot up and in my bios. They are also on seperate IDE . ones on primary and ones on second. I have hard drives on both as well and they are working fine. All mobo drivers are upto date and same with drivers and firmware for the drives. This is weird cause it just happend out of no were. If anyone out there knows maby what has happend or can help me to fix this it would be great.. thanx a bunch

 

Masterfinn

[pane00 0]

If I understand your post correctly you have cdrom's on the same IDE channel as a HD's. That's a no-no. The fastest CDrom or DVD player in the world is going to always be slower than a hard drive. IDE channels will transfer data at the same speed as the slowest device on that channel. Put your optical drives on the 2nd and Hard drives on the first or primary. Now to your problem. Befor you do what I stated above. Try this, Go to device manager and right click the problem items and uninstall them. It should ask if you want to reboot check no. Three item's down in the device manager are IDE ATA/Atapi controllers uninstall the first and second the same way you did the DVD/CDrom drives. Then reboot. Then I would shut down your PC and put the all the hard drives on First channel and optical drives on second. Remember put the harddrive that is your OS as MASTER. You should get a performance increase if you do that. Start up your PC and the check the Bios and make sure that it detects it properly (I've built many different PC's for friends and sometimes forget to jumper the devices properly, always in haste.) When you get into Windows let it redetect and it will install the things you uninstalled and it should ask you to reboot again, Do so. Then when Windows starts up again check the device manager and everything should be ok. Also, when your in the device manager make sure everything is in DMA mode (open up the IDE ATA/ATAPI contollers and click on Primary IDE channel and in advanced settings transfer mode: DMA if availble should be highlighted on the pull down list. Do the same on the secondary IDE channel. Hope this helps and let me know how it went.

[sapiens74 0]

Quote:

If I understand your post correctly you have cdrom's on the same IDE channel as a HD's. That's a no-no. The fastest CDrom or DVD player in the world is going to always be slower than a hard drive. IDE channels will transfer data at the same speed as the slowest device on that channel. Put your optical drives on the 2nd and Hard drives on the first or primary. Now to your problem. Befor you do what I stated above. Try this, Go to device manager and right click the problem items and uninstall them. It should ask if you want to reboot check no. Three item's down in the device manager are IDE ATA/Atapi controllers uninstall the first and second the same way you did the DVD/CDrom drives. Then reboot. Then I would shut down your PC and put the all the hard drives on First channel and optical drives on second. Remember put the harddrive that is your OS as MASTER. You should get a performance increase if you do that. Start up your PC and the check the Bios and make sure that it detects it properly (I've built many different PC's for friends and sometimes forget to jumper the devices properly, always in haste.) When you get into Windows let it redetect and it will install the things you uninstalled and it should ask you to reboot again, Do so. Then when Windows starts up again check the device manager and everything should be ok. Also, when your in the device manager make sure everything is in DMA mode (open up the IDE ATA/ATAPI contollers and click on Primary IDE channel and in advanced settings transfer mode: DMA if availble should be highlighted on the pull down list. Do the same on the secondary IDE channel. Hope this helps and let me know how it went.

That's only true on older IDE controllers. If you use an ATA 66 Cable or above, both drives will transfer at their highest speeds

[pane00 0]

Quote:

That's only true on older IDE controllers. If you use an ATA 66 Cable or above, both drives will transfer at their highest speeds

I've heard that too. I've also have been told that isn't true and on the show ScreenSavers on TechTV the say that even with a ATA 133 contoller card put optical drives on their own channel. So what's wrong with playing it save and doing it anyway? It can't hurt.

[BladeRunner 0]

Oh it certainly is true for Intel IDE controllers and has been since the days of the I815 chipset.

Any combination of device can be added to said controller and each device will run at it's maximum transfer rate.

As I said above, this is true for all Intel IDE controllers since the 815 chipset.

I cannot comment on VIA, SIS, Promise, Highpoint etc as they don't list such a feature in the specifications - but I would be very surprised if they didn't do something similar.

[pr-man 1]

If you installed Clonecd uninstall it now. I had this same problem and something in clonecd corrupted some files

[pane00 0]

Quote:

Oh it certainly is true for Intel IDE controllers and has been since the days of the I815 chipset.
Any combination of device can be added to said controller and each device will run at it's maximum transfer rate.
As I said above, this is true for all Intel IDE controllers since the 815 chipset.
I cannot comment on VIA, SIS, Promise, Highpoint etc as they don't list such a feature in the specifications - but I would be very surprised if they didn't do something similar.

I have a via chipset. I've heard so many conflicting stories that I just do it to be safe. I'm not going to benchmark to make sure. It's not worth it me. On the fly copies of cd's are the only reason I can see to have your optical drives on different channels. I personally don't like (the on the fly) process anyway. But hey, I was just trying to help he can do what ever he wants

[Masterfinn 0]

Im not using clone cd, and i dont have a via chipset. The reason i have the cdrom drives on diff IDE is for cd to cd coping. I have also already tried to do the uninstall in device manager and rebooting still nothing works. thanx for all the quick responces

 

Masterfinn

[pr-man 1]

how about system restore to a previous point?

[sapiens74 0]

Quote:

how about system restore to a previous point?

Good point.

System Restore is a real life saver

[Masterfinn 0]

i dont think my system resotre is working .. i checked if it was enabled and working under my system properties, and it is, but when i goto into my backup utility/advanced mode/Restore and Manage Media/ there is nothing there. it says no entries found.. is there something i need to do first in order to restore from a previous point???.. thanx

 

Masterfinn

[Masterfinn 0]

heres an update.. i just installed a whole wack of diff drivers for my mobo and chipset .. etc.. and i finally got it so that my drives dont show up with yello explaination marks on them in device manger. BUT they still dont show up in windows explorer. and will still not work if i try to run a cd.

 

Masterfinn

[pane00 0]

What mobo and chipset do you have?

[adamvjackson 0]

Quote:

Im not using clone cd, and i dont have a via chipset. The reason i have the cdrom drives on diff IDE is for cd to cd coping.

In my opinion and based on my experiences, I have my hdd1 and hdd2 on IDE1, and my optical drives on IDE2. When I need to copy a CD, I always create an image first. Maybe that's just an old habit from when CDRW drives were plagued with buffer underruns, but I've never had a bad burn from imaging to a temp file first.

[Tomay 0]

Quote:

In my opinion and based on my experiences, I have my hdd1 and hdd2 on IDE1, and my optical drives on IDE2. When I need to copy a CD, I always create an image first. Maybe that's just an old habit from when CDRW drives were plagued with buffer underruns, but I've never had a bad burn from imaging to a temp file first.

I have the same config as you. HDD1 & 2 on IDE1 and CDRW & DVD on IDE2. First there was only one HDD in the system, but when I added the second HDD it all became slower. If I run a movie from the second HDD it takes quite a while before it starts and a lot of other things go slower.
HDD 1 = 20 GB IBM (I think)(ATA 66)
HDD 2 = 60 GB WD (ATA 100)

Would it help if i put 1 HDD and 1 optical on each ide channel?
Right now I can't transfer the system to the 60 GB drive, but I will asap.
I read somewhere that certain drives from different manufacturers dont work when on the same channel? (I remember from the old days (486) that I couldn't get a seagate and a wd drive to work on the same cable).

Help. What is the best solution.

[jimf43 0]

Quote:

I have the same config as you. HDD1 & 2 on IDE1 and CDRW & DVD on IDE2. First there was only one HDD in the system, but when I added the second HDD it all became slower. If I run a movie from the second HDD it takes quite a while before it starts and a lot of other things go slower.
HDD 1 = 20 GB IBM (I think)(ATA 66)
HDD 2 = 60 GB WD (ATA 100)

Would it help if i put 1 HDD and 1 optical on each ide channel?
Right now I can't transfer the system to the 60 GB drive, but I will asap.
I read somewhere that certain drives from different manufacturers dont work when on the same channel? (I remember from the old days (486) that I couldn't get a seagate and a wd drive to work on the same cable).

Help. What is the best solution.

The following will work in 99.9% of cases:

On each IDE channel, one drive must be set to master and the other should be set to slave.

On the IDE cable drive 0 should be attached to the center connection, drive 1 should be attached to the end.

It's It's a good idea to put Hard Drives on channel 0 and CDs on channel 1 (it's arguably that this is technically unnecessary, but it's consistant).

All CDs should be set as DNA enabled in the bios

[Masterfinn 0]

I tired to first set it up with both hd's on prime IDE and the cd drives on the Second and still my drives dont come up in windows. I then changed it back to what you mentioned above exacly and still nothing.. But yet it shows fine in boot up and in device manager but nothing in windows explorer.

 

Masterfinn

[jimf43 0]

Quote:

I tired to first set it up with both hd's on prime IDE and the cd drives on the Second and still my drives dont come up in windows. I then changed it back to what you mentioned above exacly and still nothing.. But yet it shows fine in boot up and in device manager but nothing in windows explorer.
Masterfinn

Under control panel\computer management\Disk management can you see the CDs and do they have letter asignments?

[Masterfinn 0]

nope cant see cd drives under there

 

Masterfinn

[jimf43 0]

Quote:

nope cant see cd drives under there
Masterfinn

At this point, Their is no easy solution. You are looking at ether:
1.) the IDE channels being screwed up (bios / bridges / whatever), or,
2.) that the message you're getting about the registry ( "there is a configuration problem in registry and is damaged or incomplete") is correct, and you've got a corrupt installation.

Since the HDs apparently work on all channels, and the DVD/CDs don't work on any, It's probable that this is an OS/software problem. I think that you should reinstall XP. That should at worst indicate, one way or another, what is really happening, and at best, correct the problem.