Multiple Instances of Primary and Secondary IDE channels

[Guest]

Hello. Windows XP Pro SP2 - Athlon 64 3400+, 512 MB RAM, Toshiba R5372
DVD/CD burner. Having a lot of trouble with the optical drive not completing
a write and not recognizing blank media. In looking around, I see in device
mgr somehow I have picked up an extra IDE Channel on both the primary and
secondary. IOW, what I see listed under "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" is:

Primary IDE Channel
Primary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Secondary IDE Channel
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Channel Controller
VIA Busmaster IDE Controller

I don't think this is right. Should I work on removing one of the Primaries
and one of the Secondaries? In the list above (disregarding the last two for
the moment) the first entry cannot be disabled, but the other three can.
Question is which one should be removed/disabled. The second and fourth
entries do have a "Resources" tab listed, the first and third do not (and
therefore you can't see what IRQ they're sitting on for example).

How should I proceed here? I'd like to get my DVD/CD burner back!!!

 

[Guest]

In device mgr,expand the tree to the optical drive,R.click on
it,select,uninstall
Do not restart comp.as prompted,continue to uninstall all connected to same
IDE controller,once thru,close out,shut down computer.On start up,xp will
reinstall all

 

[Guest]

OK, I just want to make sure I understand this. There are only two devices
that I can see are attached to the IDE channels - the hard drive and the
optical drive. I believe the hard drive is on the primary and the optical is
on the secondary as this is customarily how I set up a system. Since I have
a duplicate set of each (don't ask me how this happened), I assume you'd like
me to uninstall both devices regardless of where they reside.

You want me to uninstall both of those drive devices, correct? Do I have
any concerns about the hard drive not coming back (to boot or to load Windows
for example) because its IDE controller can't be found?

 

[Guest]

Hmmm... Darn! No replies yet....

OK, I'm asking another question because I don't totally understand Andrew's
response.

Perhaps I haven't described the symptoms adequately. I stick a blank DVD
R/W or CD-R or CD-RW in, the drive spins up, the activity light winks about
20 times then it quiets. Go to copy a file in Explorer and Win reports
there's no disc. Go to write something in Nero and right at the end of the
burn, I see "An error has occurred". Erase a DVD R/W or CD-R/W and it goes
through but then insert it back in and try a write and I get the "disk is not
empty... Insert an empty disk". Tried three diff brands of media.

What does removing the two devices in dev mgr (optical drive and HDD) have
to do with removing the duplicate primary/secondary channels off the ARAPI
Controller??? I'm curious if there's another step(s) that needs to be
performed to actually remove those dupes and I don't know which ones to
remove. If so, do I just go and uninstall every one of them too and hope for
the best? And, I wonder - is actually having a duplicate set of
primary/secondary is wrong in the first place? I think it is but I'm not
sure.

Again, I want to proceed very cautiously here because I don't want to mess
things up so badly that I'm stuck (no one does really).

 

[Hoib]

The answer is, the motherboad BIOS dictates that Channel 1 and Channel 2 IDE
are for normal IDE activity; one Master and one Slave each. The MB also has
IDE Channels 3 and 4 (Master only) in the BIOS - to house the SATA devices.
Windows picks this up and translates it to Primary - Primary, Secondary -
Secondary. Having them "duplicated" is an expected outcome and so it's
normal to see this on an ABit MB.

H

 

[Timothy Daniels]

The answer is, the motherboad BIOS dictates that Channel 1 and
Channel 2 IDE are for normal IDE activity; one Master and one Slave
each. The MB also has IDE Channels 3 and 4 (Master only) in the
BIOS - to house the SATA devices.
Windows picks this up and translates it to Primary - Primary,
Secondary - Secondary. Having them "duplicated" is an expected
outcome and so it's normal to see this on an ABit MB.

It appears that you're saying that the HD boot order with the ABit BIOS
is (channel numbering starting with "1"):

Master, IDE ch. 1,
SATA ch. 3,
Slave, IDE ch. 1,
SATA ch. 4

If true, where does Master and Slave on IDE ch. 2 come in? Or is there
no IDE channel 2 nowadays?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Guest]

Yes, Tim - that's exactly the way they said it was supposed to be. A primary
and a secondary IDE in Windows (denoted by Channel 1 and Channel 2
respectively in the BIOS) and another set, called Primary and Secondary in
Windows (denoted as Channel 3 and Channel 4 in the BIOS) for a total of 4 for
the ABit MB. I must admit, this is a first for me, but I'm convinced that's
the correct explanation.

On my system, the optical drive occupies the Channel 1 (first primary) as
the Master. There is no HDD on Channel 1. There is no slave on Channel 1
either. There is no device at all on Channel 2, the Secondary IDE channel.
There is the SATA HDD occupying the Channel 3 slot, inappropriately named
"Primary" on the device mgr screen, appearing to me as though it is a
duplicate entry. There is no device located on Channel 4. So I have two
devices, one of which isn't working properly.

I may start another thread addressing the optical drive failure on the
help_and_support newsgroup so it doesn't get tangled up with this one. I
simply wanted to know if I'm looking at a duplicate set - and I'm not.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Thanks for the details on the ABit HD boot order.
I'm sorry I can't help with your optical drive problem.

*TimeDaniels*