installing a dvd writer

[John Kelly]

My 3 and a 1/2 year old Windows XP system has been running with very few
problems since I had it. Today I decided that I wanted to put a DVD
writer in and it all seems trivial, remove old DVD ROM, plug in new DVD
writer after checking the master/slave pin thing and turn on the PC. As
soon as I log on it tells me it's found a new DVD Writer (correct name
and all), then it tells me it's found a new CD-ROM (not sure about that)
and then the system hangs. I've tried a few things - changed from Master
to Cable Select, removed the old CD Writer so it's just the DVD Writer,
put the CD Writer, the old DVD ROM and the new DVD Writer in, but
nothing seems to make any difference.

Anyone got any ideas what's wrong with this? Is it likely to be a
hardware fault or is it more likely to be software? What can I try next?

Thanks

 

[YKW]

make sure the master / slave / cable select setting is correct for the
connection you are making. Make sure it is correctly connected. does your
bios recognise the drive?

 

[John Kelly]

make sure the master / slave / cable select setting is correct for the
connection you are making. Make sure it is correctly connected. does your
bios recognise the drive?

Forgive my ignorance but whenever I connect it the PC hangs. How can I
check the bios?

It appears in the list of devices with it's correct name if I can get
that started before I plug it in if that's what you mean

 

[YKW]

The bios is the first thing to bring up and very very few machines hang up
that early in the process before drivers are loaded. If you know how to get
into the bios (many use the F"10 or DEL key) hold it down just as your
machine attempts to boot.

 

[John Kelly]

The bios is the first thing to bring up and very very few machines hang up
that early in the process before drivers are loaded. If you know how to get
into the bios (many use the F"10 or DEL key) hold it down just as your
machine attempts to boot.

Thanks - F11 on mine. Yes it does detect it correctly. I was wrong
before when I said the system hangs. The system doesn't hang. What
happens is that services.exe takes up as much CPU as it can and
everything else runs so slow that they just time out.

 

[Bob Harris]

Did you install any new software?

The software that supported the old CD writter, may not support the new DVD
writing, at least without some patch/upgrade.

Worse, if you had CD writing software, then installed new DVD writing
software, without first removing the old software could cause a problem.
That is even true of the same software, like Nero 6 and 7 or Easy CD 8 and
9. Unless the manufacture explcitly says that an upgrade is possible, a
clean install of the CD/DVD software is safer.

Try booting into safe mode an uninstalling all CD/DVD software, then only
re-install the latest/best, with all updates. Of course, be sure that the
software you are installing says that it is XP-compatible.

Note that without any CD/DVD writing software installed, XP should still
detect the hardware and install default drivers that permit reading from CDs
and DVDs. That might be a good test.

Another test of hardware would be to boot the PC with a good, old DOS floppy
and do a DIR on an data CD. To do this you will need a DOS floppy with
CDROM support. You can download an image of one from www.bootdisk.com. I
like their 98SE floppy. Note that there is no such thing as an XP floppy,
which is why I suggest 98SE. However, the XP CD is bootable, and that is
another possible test. And, Microsoft offers a free download os a set of
floppies, they call "setup disks", which can boot the PC into the XP
recovery console, whihc is DOS-like, but also can see NTFS disks.

 

[John Kelly]

Did you install any new software?

The software that supported the old CD writter, may not support the new DVD
writing, at least without some patch/upgrade.

Worse, if you had CD writing software, then installed new DVD writing
software, without first removing the old software could cause a problem.
That is even true of the same software, like Nero 6 and 7 or Easy CD 8 and
9. Unless the manufacture explcitly says that an upgrade is possible, a
clean install of the CD/DVD software is safer.

Try booting into safe mode an uninstalling all CD/DVD software, then only
re-install the latest/best, with all updates. Of course, be sure that the
software you are installing says that it is XP-compatible.

Note that without any CD/DVD writing software installed, XP should still
detect the hardware and install default drivers that permit reading from CDs
and DVDs. That might be a good test.

Another test of hardware would be to boot the PC with a good, old DOS floppy
and do a DIR on an data CD. To do this you will need a DOS floppy with
CDROM support. You can download an image of one from www.bootdisk.com. I
like their 98SE floppy. Note that there is no such thing as an XP floppy,
which is why I suggest 98SE. However, the XP CD is bootable, and that is
another possible test. And, Microsoft offers a free download os a set of
floppies, they call "setup disks", which can boot the PC into the XP
recovery console, whihc is DOS-like, but also can see NTFS disks.

Thanks Bob - I've phoned the shop who sold it to me and I can go down
there and get it checked. If it works in one of their machines then it's
my box that needs looking at and rebuilding. If not....

 

[MAP]

My 3 and a 1/2 year old Windows XP system has been running with very
few problems since I had it. Today I decided that I wanted to put a
DVD writer in and it all seems trivial, remove old DVD ROM, plug in
new DVD writer after checking the master/slave pin thing and turn on
the PC. As soon as I log on it tells me it's found a new DVD Writer
(correct name and all), then it tells me it's found a new CD-ROM (not
sure about that) and then the system hangs. I've tried a few things -
changed from Master to Cable Select, removed the old CD Writer so
it's just the DVD Writer, put the CD Writer, the old DVD ROM and the
new DVD Writer in, but nothing seems to make any difference.

Anyone got any ideas what's wrong with this? Is it likely to be a
hardware fault or is it more likely to be software? What can I try
next?

Thanks

When I installed a new DVD burner (internal) on my system I could not get it
to start as well,it would just hang. I knew that I installed it correctly
and was stumped. What I did was unplugged everything from my computer except
the monitor,mouse and keyboard, and restarted, well it worked fine after
that, once the new drivers were install I shutdown and plugged everything
back in and its been working fine eversince.

I posted this in the hardware group just so I could understand just
what happened and the two posts I got in answer to my querry was basically
"its the ghost in the machine".
Give it a try.

 

[John Kelly]

When I installed a new DVD burner (internal) on my system I could not get it
to start as well,it would just hang. I knew that I installed it correctly
and was stumped. What I did was unplugged everything from my computer except
the monitor,mouse and keyboard, and restarted, well it worked fine after
that, once the new drivers were install I shutdown and plugged everything
back in and its been working fine eversince.

I posted this in the hardware group just so I could understand just
what happened and the two posts I got in answer to my querry was basically
"its the ghost in the machine".
Give it a try.

As part of the installation process - opening up the machine - I did
this anyway so no go :-( I must have a pretty nasty ghost in there....

Today's the day I'm rebuilding the o/s so hoping that will sort it. I'll
post here with the results.

 

[John Kelly]

Thanks for the comments folks. I re-installed windows and guess what -
it worked. Typical. I suppose it needed a good clean but that's a whole
day wasted on it :-(

John