Author Topic: CD/DVD Drive issues (Read 4809 times)

dmonterisi · « **on:** March 02, 2005, 11:03:26 AM »

Okay, i'm at wits end with my computer. i'm thinking the best course of action is to run it over with my car, but i figured i'd ask for advice here first. i have a dell dimension 8100 P4 2ghz 1gig of ram. 2 HD's (partitioned into 4 drives), a dat drive (don't use this anymore), internal cd-r/cd-rw/dvd-rom, and an external firewire dvd-r drive.

I'm having trouble with my cd-r and dvd-r drives. they both come up in windows explorer. The internal drive is letter H: and the external drive is letter N:. G: is not used,though it used to be the external drive, one day it just became N:. I, J, K, and L are a multi-type flash media redia (CF, etc). drive M: is my ipod. a couple of months ago, everything was working fine. Now, i can see the cd-r and dvd-r drives in windows explorer, but the computer won't read any data off them. if i put a cd or dvd in H:, it recognizes that somehthing is in there but the title of the media no longer appears in windows explorer. when i click on it, it goes to a blank window and does not see the files. Out of nowhere, the other day, it saw the files for a few minutes, then went back to not seeing anything. If i put a cd-r or dvd-r in drive N: nothing happens (the drive spins but that's it). If i try to click on N:, I get the folllowing message:

N:/ is not accessible
The request is not supported

Roxio will not recognize either drive.

discwelder sometimes will burn to dvd-r but not usually.

in the device manager, it says both drives are working properly. according to the device manager, the internal drive is located at Location 0(0); the external drive is located at LUN 0.

what the fuck is going on here? I would prefer not having to do a re-install of windows cause i can't get everything off my HD's since neither drive is working. is there some kind of conflict? should i disconnect some shit and try something? this is a complete pain in the balls. any help is appreciated.

-damon

dnsacks · « **Reply #1 on:** March 02, 2005, 11:50:57 AM »

i'd try disconnecting the dvd drive(external), rebooting the pc and see if it recognizes the internal cd drive.

When it doesn't, try uninstalling the internal cd drive (through the device manager) and rebooting windows.

This will cause windows to re-install the internal cd drive which "should" cause whatever conflict is keeping it from working to resolve.

If/when you get the cd drive working, plug back in the dvd drive and see if it runs.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #2 on:** March 02, 2005, 11:57:09 AM »

darren-

i tried that and it didn't do anything different.

is there any info from the IRQs, I/O, or conflicts/sharing dialogs of the system information utility that may be of use?

is it possible that there is something wrong with my IDE controller or something like that?

do i just need a new computer?

dnsacks · « **Reply #3 on:** March 02, 2005, 12:45:10 PM »

could be that your scsi -based dat drive has messed up your ide drive settings -- check out Mr. Jitter's post on this thread -- http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=36481.15 for the link.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #4 on:** March 02, 2005, 12:50:04 PM »

it would be strange cause it's been in my pc for over a year, though i've hardly used it. I think i'll just take out the scsi drive and card and see if i take some other crap out if i can clear the conflict. there's so much crap in this computer right now. it seems that the conflict started either when i installed a monitor calibration usb device or when i upgraded one of my pieces of photo editing software and it installed this CF media reding device that cannot be disabled. stupid piece of windoze shit.

Scooter · « **Reply #5 on:** March 02, 2005, 12:54:33 PM »

Start windows in "safe mode", then see if you can get it working... I think it's F8 during boot-up??

dmonterisi · « **Reply #6 on:** March 02, 2005, 12:58:18 PM »

Quote from: Scooter on March 02, 2005, 12:54:33 PM

Start windows in "safe mode", then see if you can get it working... I think it's F8 during boot-up??

ok, i'lll try that, but if it doesn't work, i'm strapping m-80's to the motherboard and seeing if that helps.

Scooter · « **Reply #7 on:** March 02, 2005, 01:03:40 PM »

dmonterisi · « **Reply #8 on:** March 02, 2005, 01:07:34 PM »

tried safe mode, but didn't work. later today, i'm gonna open it up and remove some crap from it and see if that helps.

any chance my IDE controller is trashed or something like that? but that really wouldn't explain why the external doesn't work either though, right?

dnsacks · « **Reply #9 on:** March 02, 2005, 01:10:55 PM »

right -- question -- do any conflicts show up in the device manager? (exclaimation marks next to devices listed (?))

dmonterisi · « **Reply #10 on:** March 02, 2005, 01:14:15 PM »

there is one, under USB controllers > USB Mass Storage Device

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware because there is a duplicate device already running in the system. (Code 42)

Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.

however, the USB 2.0 Root Hub Device thing is working fine and under cd-rom drives, both the internal and external drives show as working properly.

chase · « **Reply #11 on:** March 02, 2005, 02:11:32 PM »

i would try uninstalling the "monitor calibration usb device" since you said that you cannot disable it and the problem occured around the same time as when you installed it. also, the conflict in the device manager points to a USB device. sounds like whatever you installed as another USB device is causing problems. worth a shot, worst case scenario, it doesn't work and you reinstall the "monitor calibration usb device."

Scooter · « **Reply #12 on:** March 02, 2005, 03:37:04 PM »

You also might try going in to device manager and disabling things like usb, network cards, soundcards etc and restart. That may help clear up a conflict...

dmonterisi · « **Reply #13 on:** March 03, 2005, 02:59:22 PM »

ok, so i unplugged some crap and the internal cd drive is working intermittently. it seems that it only works if the disc is in the drive when the comp is turned on. i just transferred 4 gigs of music files from a dvd to my HD, but it took 22 minutes. this suggests to me that there is some kind of hardware issue with the drive. does that make sense? it still doesn't help figure out what's going on with the external, but maybe they are separate problems? i think i'm gonna get a new usb2/firewire card to see if that helps.

any more thoughts?

mmedley. · « **Reply #14 on:** March 03, 2005, 03:31:21 PM »

Quote from: dmonterisi on March 03, 2005, 02:59:22 PM

i just transferred 4 gigs of music files from a dvd to my HD, but it took 22 minutes.

That is about normal..for me anyways. I would recommend saving all your important data and do a reformat. YMMV.

Scooter · « **Reply #15 on:** March 03, 2005, 03:51:19 PM »

ya, before you buy any new hardware, I'd backup and reformat if it was me... That would eliminate the software side of things for sure before moving on buying more hardware.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #16 on:** March 03, 2005, 03:56:29 PM »

i would love to do that. however, the fact that the drives don't work make it awfully hard to save everything in order to reformat. it's a chicken and egg kinda problem.

dnsacks · « **Reply #17 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:18:31 PM »

could you clear enough space on one of the drives to create a new partition to load a fresh install of winxp into? Then, once running you could delete the old OS stuff and still have your non-os-realted programs available.

Or, get a new drive, install it as the master IDE drive and relagate one of your current drives to a usb2/firewire external enclosure. Sounds like the only real way out of this for you will be a fresh os install.

Darrin

Scooter · « **Reply #18 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:19:11 PM »

I C. Can you network to another puter in the house and dump all your data to that box, then reformat?? How bout swapping in another hard drive you may have laying around to get up and running, then see whats up. Have you tried booting up from floppy into DOS, and seeing if you can eccess your drives that way (unless they are NTFS of course). There are some nice boot cd's here http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ if you are so inclined. I use the pebuilder all the time, it's essentially XP that runs off the cd drive.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #19 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:25:19 PM »

i have 2 physical drives (1 80 gig and 1 120 gig). each is partitioned into 2 partitions. on the bigger one, one of those partitions is a wavelab partition where i keep only music files that i'm currently working on (like 25 gigs). a lot of this stuff is already stored on dvd so i can delete some of it and move the rest of it to another partition and use this partition to install a fresh version of windows on. now, i should still be able to access the other partitions from this install of windows, correct? then, i'll just do an install with very minimum stuff, try and get everything off the computer and re-install everything fresh. does that make sense?

thanks for everyone's help.

Scooter · « **Reply #20 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:29:48 PM »

that would work if the big drive is the master. I think that windows has a prob booting form the slave HD?? But you could always switch the jumpers around and then do it if it doesn't want to install to slave.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #21 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:32:30 PM »

the big one is the slave. the second partition on the master has a lot of 24bit music that i don't want to have to redownload or i would just install it there.

i'm not at all excited about this project...ain't gonna be no fun. but it will be good in the long run, i think.

dnsacks · « **Reply #22 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:50:41 PM »

what about x-fering the 24 bit files on the master's second partition to the second partition on the slave?

dmonterisi · « **Reply #23 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:51:22 PM »

so, while i got y'all's attention, what's the optimal way for me to set up my system? 2 drives (1 80 gig and 1 120 gig). the most important uses are (in order):

-photo editing (photoshop)
-music-related (wavelab, discwelder, etc)

photoshop is a ginormous resource hog, should i set up a dual boot with a photoshop optimized setup? 1 partition for solely storing music, 1 for solely storing photos? so would that be 4 partitions with 2 xp installs, with the second xp install with basic components and photoshop?

dmonterisi · « **Reply #24 on:** March 03, 2005, 04:52:45 PM »

Quote from: dnsacks on March 03, 2005, 04:50:41 PM

what about x-fering the 24 bit files on the master's second partition to the second partition on the slave?

i could probably do that...then doing a fresh install on that partition...makes sense.

Scooter · « **Reply #25 on:** March 03, 2005, 05:36:32 PM »

Quote from: dmonterisi on March 03, 2005, 04:51:22 PM

so, while i got y'all's attention, what's the optimal way for me to set up my system? 2 drives (1 80 gig and 1 120 gig). the most important uses are (in order):

-photo editing (photoshop)
-music-related (wavelab, discwelder, etc)

photoshop is a ginormous resource hog, should i set up a dual boot with a photoshop optimized setup? 1 partition for solely storing music, 1 for solely storing photos? so would that be 4 partitions with 2 xp installs, with the second xp install with basic components and photoshop?

That prolly would work fine. I have mine set up similarly; One partition for net stuff, one partition for audio stuff (no net), these are set up as dual boot,XP on both. Then two other partitions are for storage.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #26 on:** March 03, 2005, 05:39:49 PM »

i'm thinking about using my Ipod as a temporary storage solution...this shouldn't be a problem should it? i have like 40 gigs worth of photo stuff that I don't want to lose that i could throw on my ipod and then transfer back later.

dmonterisi · « **Reply #27 on:** March 04, 2005, 12:21:28 PM »

from the custom build thread in the open forum, i'm considering just building a new machine, here's that post:

ok, so as some of you saw in the comp thread, i'm having all sorts of trouble with my machine. it's over 3 years old at this point and it's been pretty much a turtle in dealing with the hi-res photo processing i've been doing. the files that come out of my 8 mpixel camera are huge to deal with and process. a 16bit tif developed from the RAW camera file is 48mb. it takes 20-25 minutes for my computer to process a batch of 20 RAW images into 16bit tifs. so i've been thinking about upgrading for a while and given all my computer issues, the time may have come and I think I'm gonna build a machine. I have 2 HDs in my machine now (120gig and 80gig) that may be harvestable, but i probably won't so that i can get new SATA150 drives in a RAID 0 setup. I'll probably install the old drives as backup drives. I will keep my 19" trinitron CRT and the SEK'D Prodif Plus 24/96 soundcard. Other than that, i doubt i'll use any parts from my current machine. so i started spec'ing out the parts to build a new machine and here is what i'm currently looking at:

-Intel 925xCVLK motherboard w/i925x & ICH6R chipset - 800 MHZ FSB w/onboard 1gig LAN, 3 x1394 ports and 8xUSB2.0 ports
-Intel P4 640 3.2 GHZ HT CPU w/800 MHZ FSB w/2MB L2 cache
-2 x Kingston 240 pin 1 GB ECC DDR2 PC2-4200 RAM (max combined transfer rate of 8.4GB/s)
-2 x Seagate SATA150 w/NCQ 7200 RPM HD's in a RAID 0 array
-16x NEC dual layer DVD+-RW drive
-Silverstone Black Aluminum Mid-tower case w/7 expansion slots

I priced this out to around $1300 on newegg without really searching for deals yet so i can probably do a little bit better with some looking. what do you guys think of this setup for high-powered photo editing as the main priority and audio editing and processing as the second priority, and general usage (net, word processing, etc) as the third priority. would you builid it any different? is a 10k rpm SATA drive a better option than the RAID 0 array? I don't have any experience in dealing with RAID setups so any help here would be appreciated.

EDIT: also, if anyone has thoughts on cases, i'd appreciate hearing them, there are way too many to choose from on newegg.