CD/DVD will not read CDs anymore or boot

[Guest]

My CD/DVD unit stopped working yesterday on my new PC. It is alone as master on connector IDE 2 on a AMD Athlon 2800 (K7S8X Asrock motherboard) with two Harddisks on Connector IDE1 . It has worked for about a week allowing me to install XP Pro and other programs , though I have had a number of sudden freezes forcing reboot. There is no error connected to the CDunit in the device manager (which says it works OK) or BIOS and it has the exact same settings as on an identical machine which works fine. In the error log there are multiple entries mentioning Unit \Device\CdRom0 has a bad block. I cannot boot from the CD/DVD drive anymore or read any CDs (it keeps on asking for a new CD), though the drive letter (E is still in Explorer and it spins aimlessly for a minute or two until it times out. Have tried replacing the IDE cable and have also tried to move the drive to the the IDE1 connector as slave. Have also tried to use a lens cleaning CD but it will not read it. Any help appreciated or do I have to buy a new unit ?

 

[Harry Ohrn]

check Alex Nichol's primer - Problems section - and see if the fix there
helps http://www.aumha.org/a/xpcd.htm but if you used to be able to boot off
this device and can no longer do so then I'd suspect a problem with the
device. As you say it is being identified in the BIOS and if you booted off
your XP CD with it before then the CD should be OK. Before you run out and
buy a new drive do you have access to another system that you can check it
out on?
--

Harry Ohrn - MS MVP [Shell/User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp

My CD/DVD unit stopped working yesterday on my new PC. It is alone as

master on connector IDE 2 on a AMD Athlon 2800 (K7S8X Asrock motherboard)
with two Harddisks on Connector IDE1 . It has worked for about a week
allowing me to install XP Pro and other programs , though I have had a
number of sudden freezes forcing reboot. There is no error connected to the
CDunit in the device manager (which says it works OK) or BIOS and it has the
exact same settings as on an identical machine which works fine. In the
error log there are multiple entries mentioning Unit \Device\CdRom0 has a
bad block. I cannot boot from the CD/DVD drive anymore or read any CDs (it
keeps on asking for a new CD), though the drive letter (E is still in
Explorer and it spins aimlessly for a minute or two until it times out. Have
tried replacing the IDE cable and have also tried to move the drive to the
the IDE1 connector as slave. Have also tried to use a lens cleaning CD but
it will not read it. Any help appreciated or do I have to buy a new unit ?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply Harry, but I have already looked at the site you mention
and other CD/DVD sites referred to here on the user group. I have seen several other problems
which mention the "bad block" error in the log I mentioned, but no solution has been suggested, I believe.