CD Drive Not Working

KT8KT8 Surrey, UK.
edited August 2005 in Hardware
A friend asked me to look at their CD drive which wasn't working. You could see the drive in explorer/device mamanger, but put a disk in the drive and click on the drive letter, and it would prompt you to put a disk in. Tried a different cable - the same. Tried the drive in a different PC, same again. Seemed to be a faulty drive, so they ordered a new DVD Rewriter.

Fitted the new drive, same thing again, except it worked briefly after installing DVD Burning software, but after a reboot stopped working.

Don't know much about the PC, other than it's a P4 running Windows 2k. It used to be a networked PC, but now is a stand alone.

She logs in as the administator, no other users on the PC.

Where do I go from here? Could it be something in the OS?

Any ideas?

Comments

  • rapturerapture
    edited July 2005
    Tried chipset drivers yet? Other than that look at the BIOS.
    If all of those are normal look for pysical problems with the motherboard.

    Other than that I dont know, seems strange that the drive has problems in another machine, and the machine has problems with another drive.
    Unless its systematically killing optical drives...
  • youvegotjermzyouvegotjermz Baton Rouge, La
    edited July 2005
    When u install a device like that be sure that the jumper on the back is set to master and positioned on the end of the IDE cable.
  • airoh69airoh69
    edited July 2005
    youvegotjermz wrote:
    When u install a device like that be sure that the jumper on the back is set to master and positioned on the end of the IDE cable.

    Actually on P4`s it doesn`t matter if it is P.Master or slave. Maybe the PSU doesn`t have enough power to work the DVD-RW. Try removing some stuff (maybe extra fans) and try then. If it`s still not working you may have 2 possible reasons (of what i know). 1st the PSU plug may be broken and giving more power is it needs and burns your dvd or the controller on the mobo is broken.

    It was going to be better if you where giving us a full description of the system.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2005
    It still maters if you have Master/Slave settings set up on the drive if they are set up wrong you'll get conflicts. Most drives now have a cable select option which treats the drives master/slave in order they appear on the ribbon. But if you set two drives to master you'll have issues.

    However I don't think that is anything to do with this problem since he's seeing the drive in the OS and it's just not reading disks. That usually has to do with driver errors or a bad drive. Seems like your DVD burning software is causing the problem.

    Stupid question but are you sure it's windows 2000 and not XP? I know that XP after service pack 2 caused a lot of screw up's with older dvd burning software. Actually now that I think of it even with win2k service pack 4 caused older DVD burning software to stop working. Could be you just need newer burning software.
  • KT8KT8 Surrey, UK.
    edited July 2005
    kryyst wrote:
    Stupid question but are you sure it's windows 2000 and not XP? I know that XP after service pack 2 caused a lot of screw up's with older dvd burning software. Actually now that I think of it even with win2k service pack 4 caused older DVD burning software to stop working. Could be you just need newer burning software.

    Definately Win2k. The software is HT Fireman, but even without the Burning software, shouldn't it just work as a standard CD drive?

    Would booting up from a floppy with CD support prove anything? If it works in this conditions it would eliminate the drive as the fault?
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2005
    It should work as a standard cd without the burning software. The problem is (if it is the burning software) it puts on diferent cdrom drivers that windows doesn't like if they are too old.

    Yeah if you can boot off a cd-rom it proves that the drive is fine.
  • KT8KT8 Surrey, UK.
    edited July 2005
    Drive works fine when booted from a win98 floppy. Intermittently works within W2k, but more often than not it doesn't. Swapped DVD & HD onto opposite IDE controllers, exactly the same. No chipset upgrade for the PC (IBM Netvista). Tried the new drive in my PC and it works a treat!

    Apart from doing a fresh install of windows, is there anything else I can try?

    Cheers.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2005
    Uninstall your burning software and install the newest version of Nero that may fix the cdao drivers.
  • KT8KT8 Surrey, UK.
    edited July 2005
    kryyst wrote:
    Uninstall your burning software and install the newest version of Nero that may fix the cdao drivers.

    I would if I could get the DVD drive to work so I could install Nero....
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited July 2005
    Yeah sorry I was thinking of installing it from more illicit methods....ok first do an add/remove of your burning software. Power off the computer and remove the dvd drive. Reboot and make sure it's also removed from the hardware settings.

    Do a windows update to make sure you have all the patches including the newest directx.

    Power down and install the drive reboot and it should detect it and install it. See if that fixes the problem. If it does - in that you can read cd's off of it then install the newest version of Nero you can get and it should fix everything.
  • KT8KT8 Surrey, UK.
    edited July 2005
    Stuck in a spare hard drive, installed XP and the DVD Drive worked just fine, so I'll be doing fresh install shortly.....

    thanks for you help!!
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited August 2005
    Just keep in mind that it may stop working again if you patch XP to SP2 and your burning software is outdated.
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