Computer is not seeing CD drives!

Tim

Someone I know (not me) has an E Machines T2200 desktop. Yesterday, he said it would not see the CD drive and the DVD drive. He said it had an error 41, whatever that is.

I looked at it myself, and checked in the Device Manager. It says the drivers are installed, but it doesn't see the CD and DVD drives. System Restore didn't fix it.

I had him unhook all the wires from the drives, turn the computer on for a few minutes, then turn it off and reconnect the wires. That didn't help.

After calling E Machines tech support for the second time, they told him the motherboard was defective. Could it be? Everything else on the computer works, including going on the internet. The C: 100 GB hard drive is still there.

primesuspect

Yep, we've had the exact same thing happen to a customer's Gateway G700 desktops. 3 out of the 10 had the secondary IDE channel die, all around the same time (within months of each other) - it was so weird.

I wonder if it's the same motherboard......

Tim

This T2200 computer is almost 2 years old. Not sure what MB is in it. Whatever it came with, as I know it has never been taken apart before.

Can I have him test this secondary IDE idea by connecting one of the CD drives on the same cable as the C: drive?

Both the CD drive and the DVD drive are on a 2 connector ribbon cable that goes to one IDE socket on the motherboard. I might try taking that 1 into 2 cable and connecting it to the C: and D: drives and see if it works then.

primesuspect

Yeah give that a shot. That will tell you for sure.

Weedo

Try adding an IDE controller card and run the drives from that.

primesuspect

Many IDE controllers won't recognize ATAPI devices (optical drives), so if you do go that route, make SURE that the controller supports atapi and not just ATA.

Tim

I'll test it by rerouting the IDE cable to include the hard drive and one CD drive (from the hard drives' original socket, since that still works), and if that works we'll know the MB is screwed up and just replace the MB.

Perhaps I'll even try running the hard drive from the secondary IDE socket as an extra test.

Will an NF-7 drop right into this computer? I need to look up the form factors and all that stuff.

Straight_Man

OTOH, I had a two 1\2 year old eMachines come in day before yesterday. No DVD, but one CD-RW that could not get recognized. Not cable, not IDE chip, was the DRIVE. Drive could not repsond to its eject button on front either, which is why I even swapped in a new drive. Idea, swap either the DVD or the CD-RW or CD-Rom to primary slave like you were going to. IF computer does not boot, then check the jumper on drive.

There is also one other way to have a DVD and CD-RW on same cable suddenly nor work, and this swap with jumper fix will eliminate that also-- IF both the DVD and the CD-RW are jumpered cable select and boht tend to like slave or boht tend to like master, or one is not ATAPI compliant, than BOTh dfrives will be lost to windows and possibly hang the whole IDE secondary channel.

Yet another way is for IDE cable to become unhooked or PARTLY loose on either of the optical drives on same cable. soem opticals do NOT like 80 conductor cables either, and will fart until given an older 40 conductor IDE cable. HDs of 3-0 years old vintage TEND to want the 80 conductor cable (wires visibly thinner, same connections as connector, somtimes color coded connectors instead of all black connectors). Stick the 40 conductor cable on HD, and the 80 conductor on opticals, NOT normally a good idea if both are in box.

The drive that failed??? It was a Samsung CD-RW and the box now has a Liteon in it and four times the stock supplied memory of 128 MB (with XP Home, that is not enough RAM to burn things on CD, either, if they are media things. I went to Crucial, and for that model eMachines I had here, Crucial says to use 512 MB as recommended. Possible that if you swap out the Cd-RW and it still will not work that it is also the Hynnix 128 MB stick, when I stuck a Crucial stick, same speed, 512 MB, the eMachines did great with the Liteon burner and later the 128 MB stick got trashed when mem86 failed it within an hour. RAM and CD-RW for that box, combo issue, not motherboard itself, so as Prime sometimes likes to say:

Ommmm Mani Padme Mem86....
Also, please.

Tim

I'll try doing that also.

The drives and wires in this computer are all what it came with from E Machines. Nothing has ever been swapped out or modified.

The person who uses the computer is a DJ, and I know he burns CDs A LOT. He has several hundred CDs he made that he uses on jobs, and they were all burned on this computer and drive setup. He says he has over 4000 songs, and they've all been put on backup CDs at least once.

Possibly one or both drives are just plain worn out? And a defective drive is hanging up the whole secondary IDE channel?

primesuspect

That is also a possibility, Tim.

Tim

Okay, I showed him this topic, and he's done all the tests with putting the CD / DVD drives on the primary IDE channel and so forth. They still don't work, so we're going ahead with the theory that the motherboard is bad.

It's an ECS L7VMM2 Revision 1.0 board. Is it even any good? If not I will find a better replacement.

I may bring his CD / DVD drives over to my computer and hook them up for testing just to be extra sure.

I'll post a topic in the motherboard section about it.