ATA optical drives can't read disks

[Guest]

I have a home built machine.
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe, AMD 64 3000, 2 gb dual channel RAM, SATA drives, plus
three DVD/RW drives. An I/O Magic 16X Lightscribe drive, an Emprex 16X dual
layer, and a Plexor SATA 16X dual layer. Last week both the ATA drives
stopped reading disks. The Plexor is still OK so I am assuming an ATA issue.
Both ATA drives show up in BIOS and Device Manager and OK. Both ATA drives
seem to show all drivers as OK using Plexor Power Tools. I have tried moving
the drive to another IDE channel, another IDE cable, and switching them from
Master/Slave to Cable Select.

I was going to try a Windows repair but I (stupidly) allowed to automatic
upgrade to SP2 from SP1. Now the installation disk says it can't repair the
installation and I can start over.

Other than wiping the disk, I can a) install Windows Media Edition or
Windows 64bit edition b) try to repair the SP2 install with help from this
forum

Suggestions?

Froggie

 

[Richard Urban]

If you want to perform a repair install of Windows XP SP2, you need a
Windows XP CD that has SP2 incorporated into the CD.

You can you this yourself by a process called "slip streaming". The easiest
way is to use the AutoStreamer utility available from
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=223562. Follow the
instructions when you start the application.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Actually is you regret installing SP2,then boot to xp cd,select install xp,
repair this copy.By doing so all xp updates are deleted,you'll end up with
an almost clean install of xp,all settings user files remain intact.Otherwise
whats wrong with SP2,the SATA drives?Try downloading intels chipset
installation utility,and the matrix disk mgr-if you run intel hardware..Too
bad
if you dont.

 

[Guest]

Actually Andrew, I have tried what you suggest. When you install XP SP1
there is a very broad caution that all you previous setting will be lost if
you continue with the install. You believe this is incorrect?

Froggie

 

[Guest]

Thank you Richard. I will give this a try.

If you want to perform a repair install of Windows XP SP2, you need a
Windows XP CD that has SP2 incorporated into the CD.

You can you this yourself by a process called "slip streaming". The easiest
way is to use the AutoStreamer utility available from
http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=223562. Follow the
instructions when you start the application.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!