[jacktro]

had this problem a few years back but it seems to be back...the light flashes all the time and wont allow me to open the drawer...its a NEC ND-1100A its quite old and i have not been able to find a driver for it so if anyone has any ideas that would help that would be great
thx
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You don't need any special drivers to eject or open the drawer, or to play regular CDs. Unfortunately you failed mention what operating system, we can't really help you with drivers anyway.

I would unplug the computer from the wall, open the case and make sure all cable connections to the drive are securely fastened. Make sure the interior of the case is clean of heat trapping dust while in there. The fact the light flashes means it is getting power, so that would suggest the data interface is having problems. Do you see the drive under My Computer? If so, can you right click on it and click Eject and have it pop open?

Have tried pushing a straightened paperclip in the tray release hole?

[Digerati]

You don't need any special drivers to eject or open the drawer, or to play regular CDs. Unfortunately you failed mention what operating system, we can't really help you with drivers anyway.

I would unplug the computer from the wall, open the case and make sure all cable connections to the drive are securely fastened. Make sure the interior of the case is clean of heat trapping dust while in there. The fact the light flashes means it is getting power, so that would suggest the data interface is having problems. Do you see the drive under My Computer? If so, can you right click on it and click Eject and have it pop open?

Have tried pushing a straightened paperclip in the tray release hole?

[jacktro]

"Unfortunately you failed mention what operating system"...you can see what op. system i have if you look under my avatar...

im not looking for a driver just to open the drawer i was hoping that if i could find an updated driver for the optical drive it might fix the problem.
i can see the drive in "my computer" and it wont eject the drawer from there either and the paper clip did open it but after putting a cd in it does nothing.
pc is clean,cables are all connected good,i was thinking of disconnecting my other dvd rom drive & card reader to see if they are causing conflict short of that im thinking it might be fried and need to replace it.cant really afford a replacement right now so im open to any suggestions for a fix.as you said light means its powered up so im hoping something can be done to fix it.

Edited by jacktro, 19 October 2010 - 03:22 PM.

[jacktro]

Ok so here what i did, i went inside the tower and took out the ribbon cable from both my dvd rom & re-writer.

The dvd rom was above the faulty/flashing re-writer and the ribbon connection was labelled "Master" and the re-writer's connection was "slave"...I put the "master" connection from the dvd rom into the re-writer and left the "slave" connection unpluged and now the re-writer is working fine:)

Should i be thinking the "Slave" connection on this ribbon type cable is faulty and look to replace it?

[Digerati]

Well, those cables are cheap, so certainly one could be bad, but they don't normally just go bad - they typically have to be damaged through some sort of physical abuse.

I assume everything did work before, right? If it never worked, you must make sure the jumpers on the back of the drives are set to MA (master) and SL (slave) accordingly. Alternatively, both must be set to CS (cable select). With cable select, the interface determines master and slave by the position on the cable. You cannot mix MA/SL and CS on the same cable.

[jacktro]

I cant see how there could have been any physical damage to the cable as it safe it the tower, maybe the slave connection just gave up, the pc must be about 8yrs old now and its always worked perfect as far as hardware goes.
i take it my drives must be set up for cable select or they would not have worked when i switched them around, but thats handy to know apart from changing the PSU and graphics card ive never done much with the hardware side of things.
i can live with the set up like this as long as i have the drive that burns im ok,at some point i will swap out the cable for a new one and see how that goes.i take it the cable type i have is IDE,similar to the pic attached

thx for the advice Digerati

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[Digerati]

maybe the slave connection just gave up

Well, it wouldn't be the connection - as again, that is a physical thing. And if you have been in there yanking on cables or bending pins, then the connection itself is probably fine. So that leaves the drive, or the IDE disc controller, which is part of the motherboard.

[jacktro]

well got up this morning and the light is flashing again and the drive wont work,gutted after i had it working & burning last night.tried setting the jumpers to cs and all diff. combos with no sucess maybe it is the IDE disc controller or maybe the pc is just on its last legs

[rshaffer61]

have you tried the problem drive in another system to see if the issue follows?
If so it may be the drive itself.
Sounds like mechanically the drive is failing along with the eye.