K
Keith Woolner
Hi everyone,
I've been having a strange problem with my home PC that's made the
DVD/CD unusable for the past week or two.
* Dual Pentium 3 CPU's, 1 GB RAM
* Motherboard is an Microstar Pro266TD Master-LR (MS-9105)
* 2 hard drives on the onboard primary IDE channel
* Pioneer DVD+RW on master on the onboard secondary IDE channel
* Window XP Service Pack 2
The DVD drive has stopped being recognized -- it still appears in
Windows Explorer with a drive name, but when either a blank DVD or one
it has previously written is put into the drive, it spins up, then stops
spinning and starts making a repeating clicking sound "chuk-chuk-chuk-
chuk". After a while it will show the directory contents in Window
Explorer, but if I scroll down the list of files, or do anything else
that would access the DVD, it happens again. This is just reading discs
-- I haven't attempted writing to the drive in its current state.
Same thing happens with CD-ROMs, though subjectively it seems to deal
with them a little bit better, and "stalls" less frequently. Still
basically unusable, though, whether it's CD's or DVD's.
Hard drives seem to be accessed fine, no matter which IDE controller
they are connected to.
I ran a complete virus scan on the system, which found nothing. I've
tried the following --
1) replacing the DVD drive with a brand new DVD writer (also a Pioneer,
but a newer dual-layer model)
2) replacing the IDE cable with a brand new cable
3) swapping the hard drives to the secondary and the DVD to the primary
controller
4) removing the DVD from Device Manager and letting it find/reinstall
drivers
I originally thought it was a hardware problem, but having swapped out
the drive, the cable, and which controller it's connected to, I'm
thinking now that its software -- either a drive, a virus, or a device
conflict of some kind. I use the DVD drive infrequently, so I don't
know exactly when it became a problem. I wouldn't rule out it being
related to XP SP2. Any ideas on what might be going on?
I've been having a strange problem with my home PC that's made the
DVD/CD unusable for the past week or two.
* Dual Pentium 3 CPU's, 1 GB RAM
* Motherboard is an Microstar Pro266TD Master-LR (MS-9105)
* 2 hard drives on the onboard primary IDE channel
* Pioneer DVD+RW on master on the onboard secondary IDE channel
* Window XP Service Pack 2
The DVD drive has stopped being recognized -- it still appears in
Windows Explorer with a drive name, but when either a blank DVD or one
it has previously written is put into the drive, it spins up, then stops
spinning and starts making a repeating clicking sound "chuk-chuk-chuk-
chuk". After a while it will show the directory contents in Window
Explorer, but if I scroll down the list of files, or do anything else
that would access the DVD, it happens again. This is just reading discs
-- I haven't attempted writing to the drive in its current state.
Same thing happens with CD-ROMs, though subjectively it seems to deal
with them a little bit better, and "stalls" less frequently. Still
basically unusable, though, whether it's CD's or DVD's.
Hard drives seem to be accessed fine, no matter which IDE controller
they are connected to.
I ran a complete virus scan on the system, which found nothing. I've
tried the following --
1) replacing the DVD drive with a brand new DVD writer (also a Pioneer,
but a newer dual-layer model)
2) replacing the IDE cable with a brand new cable
3) swapping the hard drives to the secondary and the DVD to the primary
controller
4) removing the DVD from Device Manager and letting it find/reinstall
drivers
I originally thought it was a hardware problem, but having swapped out
the drive, the cable, and which controller it's connected to, I'm
thinking now that its software -- either a drive, a virus, or a device
conflict of some kind. I use the DVD drive infrequently, so I don't
know exactly when it became a problem. I wouldn't rule out it being
related to XP SP2. Any ideas on what might be going on?