HELP!!!! Tried everything and still no luck

N

Nemesis_UK

New member
Hi all,

Ok here's the synopsis. About 2 months ago my CD drives decided to stop reading cd's for no apparent reason. I tried everything from uninstalling the drives, to reinstalling them, both in windows and physically removing them. I have updated the chipset drivers, the firmware, uninstalled and reinstalled the ASPI layer, checked the IDE settings were at DMA not PIO. I have changed the position of the drives from secondary to primary on the motherboard and ensured that the jumpers were correct on them. The motherboard seems fine as the F: drive works on the secondary IDE channel.

Finally I gave up and last night formated my C: drive and installed XP Pro today, expecting this to resolve my problem. HOWEVER - After the CD drive installed XP Pro from the cd, I removed it and inserted a cd which contained loads of setup execs to install. The problem of unreadable cd's remains in windows!!!

I have tried original game cd's and data cd's that I have previously burned - nothing works. How can the CD drive read the XP Pro CD to install the operating system - then 2 minutes later decide not to read anything at all?????

I have tried absolutely everything I can think of - please someone HELP!!!!!

System is AMD Athlon 1600XP, 512mb DDR RAM, A-Open AK77 Pro Motherboard, Operating System XP
 
S

scarecrow

1
Sounds like another of the usual horror stories with that buy guy, Apollo 266A (your chipset, that is...). Try at first without any VIA 4:1 drivers, and if you don't see the light start toying with various 4:1 releases, one of them might work, don't take it for granted, though.
 
N

Nemesis_UK

New member
Narrowed down the problem

Well I decided to put the DVD ROM from my brothers PC in and try that. Hey Presto - works like a charm. The only thing I can think of is that there was some electrical problem with the drives that caused them to blow or malfunction, as they both decided to cease at the same time.

I still dont know why it worked to install XP and then continued to fail afterwards. Ive decided to bin the drives as both are crap now - so out with the old ... in with the new.

PS .... anyone wanna buy 2 cd-r's ?? lol ;)
 
H

hamcom

1
Is it a 'bog stanadard' version of XP pro or home , or a manufacturers own installation disk . ie has it got extra software on it....like ... Easy CD creator !!
Have you put Easy CD creator on ? either this time or the first time the drives vanished ??
Easy CD creator had a very bad flaw in it where the drives would vanish .... I know .. it happened to me and thousand others !!.
Have you looked to see if the drives are recognised in 'Computer management/storage/Disk management ?

DMA is the ideal setting ... only if the drives will accept DMA setting. I would put them on PIO mode in the motherboard bios and Win XP just to see if that helps.
Some cd drives just wont work with DMA on, also some software ... eg Power DVD will often switch DMA on by default, was it this that could have 'disabled' them the first time ? There have also been a couple of windows updates that have addressed DMA problems.
As The-poacher said .... make sure they do work in another pc ,but I assume they do work if they installed the OS this time.

hope this helps ...
 
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