CD-ROM Problems, wont read anything (tried almost everything)

[superusmagister]

I have a Dell 4600. It has worked fine for the last 2 years. recently 1/1/06, both the DVD rom drive and the CD-RW drive spontaneously quit working. It is very frustrating because i have no plausible explanation for it. They were both working the morning of the 1st when i shut the comp. down, but when i rebooted a few hours later neither would work. I have the most up to date driver i can find, and i dont believe that i have a virus because i have done several scans. the device manager says that the drives are working properly and the troubleshooting guide could not solve the problem. PLEASE HELP.

 

[iss]

Try uninstalling the IDe channel that the drives are on. then reboot and windows will reinstall the ide channels and the drives when windows reboots. you can find the IDE channel in device manager under "IDE ATA\ATAPI Controllers."

 

[beerabuser30]

Are both on the same IDE channel? Or two diffrent ones? If they are the same you might want to look at the cable as well.

 

[superusmagister]

I tried Reinstalling the IDE channel today but still nothing. Still says that drives are OK but they won't read anything. Thnx for the advise though.

 

[kodrutz]

Power Cables

You could also check the power cables of your drives, since it is possible that a drive is initialised properly and then due to power cable problems it doesn't work as it should(it happen to me with a hard drive and an optical drive, and I know also other people who got stuck into such a problem).

 

[jonQ]

Also check the jumper settings on the drives themselves. Aging and even new drives do not like it when you have Cable Select for your Jumper settings. Try making the one furthest on the cable master, and the other slave.