Help

[pensfan]

I need help with something that has me stummped. Here is what my rig is like

Home built:

3.2 ghz e
2 gig ram
x850 Ati card
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
plextron DVD player (new with in 9 months) Not much burining done yet
Lite-on CDR

A few months ago I started having a problem when you put a cd in the cdrom it will not read anything at all. It shows up in device manager as working properly, however when you explore the drive it does not show a disk in the drive. You click on the drive letter and it does not give you a message to put in a disk, but it acts like a disk is not in the drive. Then a month later I had the same problem with my DVD burner. I replaced the scsi cable twicw and still don't get anything.

I tried to reinstall windows, but it acts like the disk is not in the drive. I don't even here the drive spinning. I took out the drives and tried them in another computer and they worked.

I am stummped as to why they show in device manager, but don't act like a disk is in the drive.

Thanks for the help in advance!

forgot the motherboard is a asus p4c800 deluxe

 

[raybay]

The optical drives have failed. You can get help at http://aumha.org/reg3.htm
but you will need to replace both drives at some point.
Low end DVD and CDRW drives are now the highest failure items on the modern PC computer.

 

[pensfan]

What drives would you recommend as replacements. I burn a lot of music now and plan to burn dvds a few times a month.

Thanks for the help.

 

[raybay]

Plextor and Yamaha are the best, but the higher end LG and Samsung will give you long life. Teac and Pioneer are pretty good. Avoid Sony, HP, HDLS, LaCie, and no-name brands.

 

[pensfan]

Sorry I just looked at my first post and my DVD burner is a Plextor not a plextron. I hate not catching mis spelled words in time.

You think both are dead even though they worked ok in another computer?

 

[SNGX1275]

As much as I'd like to see you punished for creating a thread title of "Help" I don't think you deserve to lose actual money.

If your drives work in another computer they are not dead. Perhaps you have bad IDE ribbons (I doubt you are using scsi drives) or the controller on your motherboard is bad.

Will your computer boot off a cd? If not you'll need a PCI IDE controller card (or scsi if you really do have scsi drives).

Please read the link in my signature, it may save you from wasting money in the future.

Assumptions I've made are you know how to boot off a cd, and that you really did test the drives in another computer.

 

[Tmagic650]

Plextor is way overrated... My Lite-On and Nec burners have burned over 300 CD's and DVD's without a problem of any kind. The NEC and Lite-On drives are much less expensive than Plextor. My CD/DVD R/W's are both over a year old.

One other thing is important to remember:

Environment... Smokers in the house, dusty, dirty computer systems. These all help kill Optical drives before their time

 

[pensfan]

Help my drives are not working

SNGX1275 ,

I applogize I do have IDE not scsi drives. My hard drives are scsi. I replaced the ribbon twice with new cables and still nothing. I am wondering if the controller is dead.

Yes I know how to boot off a cd and no it still does not work. It acts like the drives are dead. I can not even see what is on the cd's or dvd's. I am going to try the controller after work and see if that fixes it or not.

Thanks for the info.

 

[Tmagic650]

"I applogize I do have IDE not scsi drives. My hard drives are scsi. I replaced the ribbon twice with new cables and still nothing. I am wondering if the controller is dead."

Remove the IDE controller in the Device Manager and restart your system. Let Windows reinstall the controller