DvD Drive trouble or just Windows?

[QQJJz]

Ok first post here so go easy.

Problems present centering around the DvD drive:

1. "My Computer" folder spends literally 5 minutes on every single soft or hard reboot of the computer looking for itself. What I mean by this is that I try to open up the "My Computer" folder to see my drives and all I get is that flashlight searching for something. It always finds it..but after a long time of searching. Upon finally finding the HDD, Floppy, and other drives, everything works just fine without problem. This problem may possibly be the reason why my computer simply wont access any websites for the first few minutes of being booted up. When the computer begins to realize it actually has a HDD and all that it seems to let go of resources enough to let the cable modem connection have at the internet.

2. I have a DvD burner in one drive and the other drive is just a dvd player/cd burner. They are both on the same bus one master, one slave, and both will run games off DvD disks, run audio CDs..no problem. However, the BURNER is the only one that will run DvD movies clearly while the player skips them so bad the movie cannot even be run. I have tried to clean it, I have tried to clean the dvds. Its not the player drive as it will run games just fine. The dvd burner burns just fine. The dvd burner is the master by the way.

3. I have tried to switch the pins, letting the player drive become the master and the burner to become the slave. It seems to get worse.

4. Leaving a disk in the DvD player drive usually drops the percentage of the computer not getting hung up in the boot screen. It checks the drives as it should but if there is a game disk or something in the drive it kills it and I have to reboot from the startup screen. This is after the computer POST makes it past the chipset and the floppy check and all that and right before it hits the windows bootup. I have my setup priorities as floppy> CD>HDD. I have two DVD drives as I mentioned but in my BIOS the entry is simply "CD drive". I know the BIOS recognizes the drives as one of them is lighscribe capable and the other is a sony dvd player drive and that is listed in the devices area of my bios. I suppose I could also mention off hand that my keyboard tends to not fully want to work when in POST, save the F12 key and the Delete key to go to BIOS but I dont think the DvD drive is affecting that.


I have had this problem exactly like this on more than one computer. I just flashed my BIOS for the newest computer (see specs below) and nothing is different. the reason I posted more than one problem is that I have a strong feeling they are related to this drive. I have another IDE slot for the drive but I have yet to try that as I only have one cable. I'd rather keep them both on the same bus but if I cannot find a solution here I dont have much choice. Here is what I am working with:

Motherboard: ga-m55sli-s4
CPU: Athlon 64 X2-4200+
Drive1: DVDRW LIGHTSCRIBE
Drive2: DVD/CDRW (Sony)
OS: WinXP SP2
RAM: 2GB

Let me know if you guys need any more specs and thanks in advance. This problem has been alluding me for years and im frankly getting tired of it.

 

[mailpup]

Go into the Device Manager and check if any device has a yellow symbol next to it. Any that do has a driver problem and probably need a driver installed.

This may not solve anything but in your boot order switch the CD and hard drives so you have floppy>HDD>CD.

 

[gbhall]

It is not unknown for a HDD and a CD/DVD to conflict on one device cable. Especially if they are not both set to the same read/write methodology (e.g. write caching is on, ultra-dma mode etc.)

I'm a little surprised that you have lived with this problem for so long without doing the obvious thing - get another cable. You might not even need to buy one - most moderate-sized companies have old computers with spare ribbons, and would gladly give you one.

 

[QQJJz]

Go into the Device Manager and check if any device has a yellow symbol next to it. Any that do has a driver problem and probably need a driver installed.

This may not solve anything but in your boot order switch the CD and hard drives so you have floppy>HDD>CD.

No yellow here but I will give the swap a try and post results when I get a chance.

It is not unknown for a HDD and a CD/DVD to conflict on one device cable. Especially if they are not both set to the same read/write methodology (e.g. write caching is on, ultra-dma mode etc.)

I'm a little surprised that you have lived with this problem for so long without doing the obvious thing - get another cable. You might not even need to buy one - most moderate-sized companies have old computers with spare ribbons, and would gladly give you one.

The CDRW/DvD shares a cable with another DvD drive, the lightscribe/dvd burner. The HDD is seperate. And yes you're right it is a bit unusual but honestly I hardly ever use two drives so I dont encounter the problem until recently. My REAL beef is the fact "My Computer" just simply cannot find the HDD, floppy, or the dvd drives for atleast 5 minutes after a system reboot. That has eluded me because I have absolutely no idea how to solve that one. Even reinstalling windows does nothing so I have to assume its a device setup as it happened on another computer with completely different hardware.

 

[gbhall]

So eliminate one or the other optical drive and having found which causes the trouble, scrap it. Easy peasy. If removing either one does nothing, a new cable is maybe needed.

OR

your settings on the IDE devices are wrong, or assume the cable is different to what it is. Because IDE drives can be set master, Slave or Cable select. Cable select requires a different cable, with more wires. Using Master and slave only reduces the potential problems because it works with both cable types.

 

[QQJJz]

I removed the troublesome drive and no change. I was running the computer with only the DVD-RW drive and it acts just the same. However this drive does everything it is supposed to unlike the other drive but Windows Exploerer still takes like 5 minutes to find ANYTHING in the "My computer" window. This is what I have going just to remind myself and you guys:

Primary IDE channel: DVD-RW drive + Sony DvD player/ CD-RW drive
Secondary IDE channel: No devices.

I even moved the devices to the second channel assuming the first might have had some problem with it. No change. I turned scanning off of the secondary after putting the devices back on the first channel to see if it would change anything and I get nothing different. Both drives on the IDE primary are DMA'ed.

Looking at this from Device Manager, can anyone think of any other tricks? Can two drives on the same channel share DMA status?