hard drive and CD player conflicts

[ponzan]

Why should be that in my system when I play a music CD in the CDROM the hard drive monitor light lights on (of course without anything else running) and then, when I save something to the hard drive or the system accesses the hard drive the music stops briefly? which gets quite annoying!
Why is this weirdness of the CDROM messing with the hard drive while playing music!?

It does so either in Win2K or Win98. I'm working with an Athlon 950 CPU, ASUS A7V-M board with integrated AC'97 sound, 2 hard drives in the first IDE ch and the CDROM plus the CD burner in the 2nd IDE ch



any ideas why this is happening and ways to fix it?

thanx in advance

[Duracell]

Are your HDDs and the CDROM running in DMA mode?
if it isn't so, try to activate DMA;

Greetings from
Duracell

[ponzan]

yep, DMA is activated, thanks

[Duracell]

Chipset? embedded or additional IDE-Controller?
Did you tried the latest chipset/busmaster drivers?
try also the original windows native M$ busmaster drivers;

Duracell

[ponzan]

yep, the IDE controllers comes with the ASUS A7V-M board and brings up to UltraDMA/66 support, which I have enabled
I do have the latest VIA drivers, haven't try with the M$ busmasters

[ponzan]

come on guys !!!! anyone who can help on this ?

[LTR12101B]

Are you playing from Windows Media Player, with visual effects?

Switch to analog play in the options, you'll lose the visuals, but analog play is far more satisfactory for background use, as it does not demand constant data transfer.

[ponzan]

all software players playing CD's are messing with the hardrive, same with DVD's. It's like the hardrive is catching the optical drives

Shouldn't the audio or the DVD files be going straight from the ROM player to the audio hardware and software without being catched on the Hardrive ?????

[serjer]

how old r ur hdds and are they well defragmented?

[ponzan]

they are 2002 models 7200 rpm 40 GB maxors, with UDMA 66 enabled and I regularly defrag them. But the crucial point here is why the optical drives seems to be catching to the hardrive while playing regular CD's and DVD's. What's the business of these ROM players with the hardrive? I have and old putter from 1985 who doesn't does that !!! Am I the only one here with this situation ? Or is this normal? (don´t think so)

[dx]

ponzan..... have you tried experimenting by moving the drives around? Some hardware just won't play nice together.

Try several different configurations and compare the results. Esp. try the opticals on one IDE channel and the HD's on another. It may just be as simple as hardware not playing nice together. Try this and report back.

You might also try other IDE cables just to be safe. There could be some slight damage to the cable which would lead to strange problems.

[roadworker]

What ide cables are you using for your devices?
Did you already try to switch them??

[ponzan]

@ dxkim and roadworker, this has been going on since I first assembled my current putter (by the end of 2001), I've try diffs configs and IDE cables while I've changed or added new drives.
And everything is working fine. Is just this odd thing of the opticals seeming to be catching to the hardrive while playing music CDs or movie DVD's !! And nothing is more old than 2001, I have the last VIA drivers, last BIOS revision, etc.

[roadworker]

Did you try it with removed Via drivers and replaced them with windows native ones?

[scarecrow]

Windows XP don't really need any 4:1 drivers, the performance difference is so minuscule that it's not worth the risk... or isn't using 4:1 a risk?