TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Have an interesting problem here, once I installed my Samsung SATA DVD Burner and booted up my comp I noticed that during system checks it did detect it but got hung up when windows xp was loading. Eventually it loaded to desktop but windows did not detect a new device. Making sure I connected everything correctly I then tried to add new hardware but when it started searching it would randomly freeze then begin searching again only to never find anything.

So not really knowing what the problem is I'm assuming it to be a driver issue? The burner did not come with any cd/software and I couldn't find any online besides some firmware updates that I have no idea about. My Motherboard is a GA-7vt600 1394, and I already have one sata slot in use for my hd so I know they are working and I've got my settings in bios setup for sata. The DVD Burner model # is sh-s203b. I was just wondering if anyone could shed some light on this. And is it even possible to do a firmware update if the device isn't even installed or being detected by my os, if that is the problem. Thanks.

Two possibilities are you did not set the hardware jumper on the new DVD drive correctly or it's spyware. First, you need to set one CD/DVD drive as master and the other(s) as slave(s). As for spyware, it's common symptom that it messes up CD/DVD drives. Seen it many times.

To remove spyware you need to run the following 3 anti-spyware utilities:

• Ad-Aware 2007
• Spybot Search & Destroy
• AVG Anti-Spyware

All are free.

When i get problems like this (happened many times before) i usually just unplug then replug my ide cables. If you have 2 cd/dvd drives, try swapping the 2 cables connecting them. Since i am pretty dumb when it comes to doing things the right way, i usually just do stuff like that and hope for luck! (which is a pretty stupid thing to do when your working with technology...

You don't set jumpers for SATA in the same way as EIDE. For SATA DVD burners, all the rules are different. You might get help elsewhere online via a Gurgle search, or from the online manual that comes with your motherboard or computer.
Optical drives are the same in one regard... both EIDE and SATA have a failure rate as high as 15% in the first 30 days. They are shipped from China, and many are banged around enroute. So even a SATA drive can have detection or other problems.
Our experience with the Samsung Sata drives has been very good. It has been the SATA cables that have caused most of our problems.
Be aware that you motherboard or computer manufacturer has SATA drivers available for download.
It is the drivers that you need, in most cases (or chipset) (or updated BIOS drives).

long behold, it was the sata drivers update that fixed the problem. thanks for the help.