CD and DVD causes reboot

[Guest]

Almost every time I install an application from a CD in the CD-RW or DVD-RAM
drives the PC suddenly reboots halfway through. There is never any error
message - only a message after reboot about a serious error caused by a
driver. I get the same problem when trying to play a DVD on the DVD-RAM.

Any ideas please anyone?

I'm running XP SP2 on a Giga-Byte 7IXE4 with an Athlon 1GHz
Hardware is a NVidia graphics card in the AGP slot, Creative Soundblaster,
basic firewire card, network card.
Peripherals: Epson Perfection 1260 scanner, Creative webcam3, LG Flatron EZ
T910BU Monitor, Canon BJC-6500 printer, NTL Broadband cable modem into the a
network card,

 

[Kyuzo]

Sounds pretty serious. Most likely this is a hardware problem, which means
something is wrong with the CD and DVD drives themselves. Did both of them
started to act funny at the same time or was it one after the other? I would
first suggest unplugging anything unneccessary from the computer to see if
they are conflicting with each other. Check your Device Manager to see that
both the CD and DVD drive are working properly, meaning that they don't have
yellow exclaimation marks besides them. Another suggestion would be to
remove one of the drives to see if the other works normally. Another problem
could be your IDE controller on your motherboard. If that is the case, then
your motherboard needs to be replaced, unless you get an IDE controller
expansion card. I read some other post online and some other people have the
same problem. The thing is, they all have your motherboard brand. My final
suggestion would be to swap your CD drive with a known good one from a
friend or what not. If they happen to have an external (USB) burner/drive,
then it would be even more fantastic. Set it up and test it.
Anyways, try those things first and see what the results are.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the quick response, Kyuzo.
The problem is common to both optical drives, and it would be too much of a
coincidence for them both to go down simultaneously. I like the idea that
it's the motherboard IDE controller if you've seen other postings with
problems with the same MoBo manufacturer. Seems like that's the smoking gun.
Maybe it's time for a MoBo/processor upgrade anyway?
Something I didn't say was that some splash screen type images coming in
from the CDs are visibly corrupted and I get a smiliar visible corruption
problem when transferring large numbers of photos to the hard drive from a
USB card reader. If I transfer then a few at a time there's no issue. This
could be MoBo too I suppose, although I'm using the drivers from the XP disc.
Could the problem be with the memory? There are no other issues, but I do
have two 256MB sticks and a single 128MB stick, and some people say it's bad
to mix sizes with XP SP2?
Please what do you think?
Ian

 

[Kyuzo]

Hmmm...this is an old type of motherboard so a possible solution would be to
just purchase a new PC altogether, since they are so cheap now days anyways.
But, indeed, I searched for your motherboard on Gigabytes main website and
it did say that the drivers are included in Windows XP. Now that you
mentioned the other problem of transferring large files to hard drive, that
is also a bad sign. For the memory part, usually it would be best to have
all RAM modules be exactly the same in size and speed, but sometimes that is
not possible with older motherboards. Mixing different speeds however, is
worst. All of your RAM will be running at the speed of the slowest one if I
remember correctly. From what I see, you could do the things I listed before
to test out your hardware and wish for the best. However, if all of those
sound too complicating or is an inconvience, then your solution should be to
purchase a brand new system. Nevermind upgrading in your case because I am
pretty sure it is an old system. Or, you can wait around for other techies
to post their opinion on this. Either way, let us know what you will decide
on.