Very Basic CD-ROM & BIOS question

[Wayne G. Dengel]

Every so often following a Restart or Cold Boot, my machines does not see
the CD drives (2 of them: Lite CD-DVD drive and a NEC R-W drive ). I again
restart and go to the CMOS Setup. There I attempt to do a CD drive detect.
Sometimes they are seen then properly labeled, other times, not seen at all,
a cryptic DVD label is seen for the Primary CD drive, and NONE for the
Secondary (a RW drive).

A computer repair shop said the BIOS was probably crupt, possibly virus
driven.

When all is said and done, does it, the problem at the top, sound like a
BIOS problem? The two CD drives are on IDE-2. IDE-1 drives hard drives
very well without any noticable problem. The machine "runs like a top" - it
is just that more often than not, the machine is not seeing the CD drives.

BTW, the shop said that changing the mother board would not cost much more
than changing the BIOS chip. Make sense? (Machine was made by MicronPC
using an AMD 1GHz processor; all is about 2 1/2 years old.)

(Pls advise if another newsgroup is more suited to this question.)

Regards,
Wayne

 

[bc]

May be a "stupid" suggestion. Did you set the jumpers
(master/slave)on your CDRW and DVD correctly?

 

[Wayne G. Dengel]

Not a stupid question at all. It is the obvious that can kill us.
However, in this case, I have been using this system for almost 2+ years.
The 'problem' started a couple of months ago.

Regards,
Wayne

 

[Wayne G. Dengel]

BTW, is there a way to see the CMOS Setup Menu through Windows (XP)?

Wayne

 

[DMMi]

Every so often following a Restart or Cold Boot, my machines does not see
the CD drives (2 of them: Lite CD-DVD drive and a NEC R-W drive ). I again
restart and go to the CMOS Setup. There I attempt to do a CD drive detect.
Sometimes they are seen then properly labeled, other times, not seen at all,
a cryptic DVD label is seen for the Primary CD drive, and NONE for the
Secondary (a RW drive).

A computer repair shop said the BIOS was probably crupt, possibly virus
driven.

When all is said and done, does it, the problem at the top, sound like a
BIOS problem? The two CD drives are on IDE-2. IDE-1 drives hard drives
very well without any noticable problem. The machine "runs like a top" - it
is just that more often than not, the machine is not seeing the CD drives.

BTW, the shop said that changing the mother board would not cost much more
than changing the BIOS chip. Make sense? (Machine was made by MicronPC
using an AMD 1GHz processor; all is about 2 1/2 years old.)

(Pls advise if another newsgroup is more suited to this question.)

Regards,
Wayne

Try restoring the BIOS defaults. May not work, but does not cost. For many
BIOS you can go to the Exit tab, select restore defaults and then exit
saving the changes.

Don

 

[Wayne G. Dengel]

Don: I do that - sometimes it works, other times it does not. That is what
is confusing here.
Wayne

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Might be overheating or thermal creep of connectors, socketed
components. Open the case, take the chassis outside and blow the two
years + worth of dust out. Reseat all socketed components and cables,
power up with case off and verify all cooling fans are moving air.

It could also be a bad ribbon cable, or one of the drives' electronics
beginning to fail. The fact that BIOS does not see the drives correctly
all the time indicates a hardware problem of some kind.

Steve

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Nope. There are uitlis to see CMOS settings but not change them.

Steve

 

[Steve Nielsen]

Wayne,
In addtion to my other reply I recalled this...

I've had best results with the following arrangement:

Pri M = Boot HDD
Pri S = CDROM/DVD
Sec M = 2nd HDD
Sec S = CDR/RW

In the doc's for my LiteOn CDR/RW it specifically said that it does not
like being on the same IDE channel as a CDROM drive.

Good luck.
Steve

 

[Alex Nichol]

Wayne,
In addtion to my other reply I recalled this...

I've had best results with the following arrangement:

Pri M = Boot HDD
Pri S = CDROM/DVD
Sec M = 2nd HDD
Sec S = CDR/RW

In the doc's for my LiteOn CDR/RW it specifically said that it does not
like being on the same IDE channel as a CDROM drive.

Comment - my Liteon made no objection - as long as it was the master
device.

This sounds to me rather a matter of cabling. Specifically if you have
a master UDMA device on 80 wire cables, it needs to be the *end* device
on the cable with any slave on the center connector. This is because
the fast UDMA dries will be taking care to terminate the transmission
correctly; the other devices well may not be.

And it might pay to refer to the motherboard manual and use a jumper
setting it should have to clear the CMOS settings, (or remove the
battery for an hour - and incidentally check that the battery is good)
so as to ensure that is clean

If those pass, it sounds more likely the controller (South Bridge) chip
on the motherboard than the BIOS