XP Pro not recognizing my CD drives!

[gingo]

I just got xp pro for my secondary computer. I wasn't ready to loose all my files on the comp. It was running win98 SE so I just decided to do the upgrade to xp pro so I wouldn't loose all my files. Anyway, now that I'm running xp pro now, I inserted a CD and went into my computer, and I only saw a D: drive, it wasn't seeing my CDRW drive. I clicked on the D: drive and it said there was an I/O device error or something like that. so I couldn't access the cd at all. I right clicked on the drive and it said something about no scsi controllers or something. I went into my device manager and it was only seeing my CDRW drive, but it wouldn't read anything in it either.

Now I dont see any drives except my C: drive(hard drive). Whats going on?!?

I have the IDE drivers. Do I need to reinstall my mobo drivers? If I do, how would I? I cant access any CD's!

 

[repo man11]

I would double check all cable connections. And double check your BIOS settings. Reinstalling you mobo drivers might do the trick, especially if you have a Via chipset. Maybe you could go online and get them, and install them that way?

 

[gingo]

cable connections are fine. My CDRW drive is working now, but my CDROM drive does not work. I checked the bios and it only see's my CDRW also. I hate when stuff like this happens!

 

[repo man11]

If your BIOS cannot find your CDROM, that doesn't have anything to do with your OS. That leaves you with: a bad cable, power connection, mis-configured jumpers, a bad drive controller on the mobo, or a dead or dying CDROM.
But if you have your CDRW working, you should be able to do what you need to do while diagnosing your CDROM. And at least if it is a dead CDROM, they don't cost much.

 

[gingo]

Well, I dont know if the bios really displayed the name of the CDROM before either, but it worked. Just yesterday, or, earlier this morining it worked! The CDROM drive still opens when I push the button and the light goes on. Windows just doesn't see it.

I dont think its a bad IDE cable b/c its on the same cable as my CDRW drive.

 

[gingo]

When I right click on the drive. It says "no scsi host adaptors found" I click ok and it pops back up again, so I do it about 3 times and it'll finally cascade the menu where I can go to properties. It does that everytime I right click on it. dunno if that helps. Why would it be looking for scsi host adaptors?

 

[ronin1967]

You have a single IDE cable with the CD-ROM and the CD-RW on it?
Have you set them up as slave and master, or have you chosen cable select, normally I wouldn't ask, but some dirves are funny that way?

 

[gingo]

yeah, they are both on the same IDE cable. You know what I just realized though (b/c I had never bothered to look)I just looked a second ago, is that there is NO jumper on the CDROM drive. Just the bare pins. The jumper on my CDRW is set to cable select. Do you think that has something to do with it? Even though it worked with win 98 SE.

Can I use any old jumper from a mobo or something? My asus mobo came with a couple extra jumpers.

 

[ronin1967]

that could have a lot to do with it, on some drives cable select is real picky, also it's not recommended that you run a CD-ROM and CD-RW on the same IDE channel, if you have the cable space you should run:

IDE1: Hard Drive [master]
CD-ROM [slave]

IDE2: CD-RW[master]

jumpers are jumpers, you can use anyone that fits, from an old drive off an old motherboard...

 

[gingo]

Woot!!! I fixed it.

I added the jumper to the CDROM to make it master, winxp didn't boot. So I changed the jumper on the CDRW to slave instead of cable select, and now it works! It see's both CD drives. It lables both as "CD drive" in my computer. Instead of lableing my CDRW like in my other XP machine.

Oh well, as long as it'll burn CD's.

 

[ronin1967]

the label is done by a service in XP, maybe you need to enable that service, are you familiar with XP services?

 

[gingo]

no, I'm not farmiliar with much in XP.

btw, I forgot to mention, thanks for your help ronin

 

[ronin1967]

no problem...glad I could help

now about services, before we going into detail on them and what they do, let's just see if we can fix your CD-RW label problem, then after we might have you do some other tweaking to speed things up.

Follow along:

1. Start
2. Control Panel
3.Performance and Maintenance
4. Administrative Tools
5. Services
Once you have that open you will see a list of "Services"
6. Scroll down the list until you find "Shell Hardware Detection"
7. Look across, make sure it says "Started" in the "Status" column and "Automatic" in the "Startup Type" column
If it does we have another problem
If it doesn't do this:
8. Right-click "Shell Hardware Detection"
9. Left-click properties
10. In the window that will open change "Startup type:" to "Automatic"
11. Click "Okay"
12. Close Services
13. Restart

I should warn you not to fool around with any other services...

 

[gingo]

It has both started, and automatic listed.

 

[ronin1967]

I was afarid of that...but still a good lesson, you will eventually want to tweak some serives to speed Windows up.

I think the problem has to do with how you have them contected(as I mentioned before you shouldn't have a CD-ROM and a CD-RW on the same IDE.

Give me the specs on your rig...

 

[gingo]

On my new rig with xp home I have the CDRW and CDROM on the same cable and it works fine, only difference is that the CDRW is master. That one is running on an Epox 8K5A2+.

specs for this rig:

Athlon T-bird 1.33ghz
Asus A7V133
256mb crucial PC133.
Geforce2 GTS 64mb
10gb HDD
Creative CDRW drive (8x4x32x)
Generic CDROM
XP Pro
300watt PSU

 

[ronin1967]

don't get me wrong, they will run on the same cable, it's just not the best way. I think the obvious problem is that the CD-RW needs to be the master and the CD-ROM the slave, you could try that and see...

 

[gingo]

I'll try that.

 

[ronin1967]

let me know how it works for you, of course the optimum connection would be:

IDE 1 : hard drive [master]
cd-rom [slave]
IDE 2: cd-rw [master]

cd-rw's are just funny that way...

 

[gingo]

thats funny, I asked that question awhile back in the storage forum. How I should configure the IDE devices and stuff. Most people recommended I put the CD drives on the same chain the leave the HDD on its own.

btw, I just burned a CD and it worked ok.