CD/DVD Drives Not Recognizing Disks

D

dmckeon

I have a Dell Dimension PC with dual optical drives. It came with a
DVR RW drive and a CD RW drive. My son broke the CD drive, so I
replaced it with a DVD ROM drive. I made sure the jumper settings were
the same as the old drive, reconnected the ribbon and power cable and
things seemed fine. A little while later, we started having a problem
where neither drive would recognize a CD or DVD. I can see both drives
in Windows Explorer. I can even double-click the one with the disk in
it, but it just shows me an empty folder. The autorun feature doesn't
work when you insert a new disk either. If I leave the disk in there
and reboot, it's usually okay. When you want to change disks, the
cycle starts over again. Any suggestions?
 
P

paulmd

I have a Dell Dimension PC with dual optical drives. It came with a
DVR RW drive and a CD RW drive. My son broke the CD drive, so I
replaced it with a DVD ROM drive. I made sure the jumper settings were
the same as the old drive, reconnected the ribbon and power cable and
things seemed fine. A little while later, we started having a problem
where neither drive would recognize a CD or DVD. I can see both drives
in Windows Explorer. I can even double-click the one with the disk in
it, but it just shows me an empty folder. The autorun feature doesn't
work when you insert a new disk either. If I leave the disk in there
and reboot, it's usually okay. When you want to change disks, the
cycle starts over again. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Even though you've checked, look at the jumper settings again. THen
make sure the ribbon cable is properly seated at all points. Could be
one has worked loose.

Try disconnecting one of the drives and see if that helps. It could be
one of the drives failing. Or maybe the IDE controller. If it's the IDE
controller, you can buy one on a PCI card. Promise makes decent ones.
 
D

dmckeon

Thanks for the reply. I will check those things. One of the
suggestions from the link in the previous post said to make sure the
IDE controller is set to DMA. Both the primary and secondary are set
to DMA if available, but the second IDE controller is actually coming
up as PIO. Could that have something to do with it? How do I get it
to run DMA?
 
D

dmckeon

I tried a few things and it turns out the slave drive was bad I guess.
I disconnected the slave and am running only the master. It seems to
be working now.
 
P

paulmd

I tried a few things and it turns out the slave drive was bad I guess.
I disconnected the slave and am running only the master. It seems to
be working now.
Click to expand...

I forgot that newish Dell Dimentions actually require you to use the
cable select positon to work properly. You may want to try putting both
drives on cable select.
 
D

decoder

Thanks for the reply. I will check those things. One of the
suggestions from the link in the previous post said to make sure the
IDE controller is set to DMA. Both the primary and secondary are set
to DMA if available, but the second IDE controller is actually coming
up as PIO. Could that have something to do with it? How do I get it
to run DMA?
Click to expand...


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310751/en-us
 

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