Topic: CD/DVD Drive issues

[dmonterisi]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[dmonterisi]

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]

 

[dmonterisi]

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]

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

[dmonterisi]

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]

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]

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]

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.]

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.