[D3_Kamikaze]

Okay, to make a long story short:

Neither of my two CD drives are working.

This just started happening about a week ago to my first drive, and now my second one just went.

When I go into windows explorer these days, one of my CD drives (the 2nd one, Read\Write) no longer apears in the list. It also doesnt work, I've tried with various CDs. The other drive is still there, but when I insert a cd, it begins whirring up, and then stops, and slows down. It does this over and over until I take out the CD.

I'd really like to fix this myself, because I know if I go to my father for help (He has lots more experience with computers in general, especialy DOS, but I'm quite a bit more resourcefull ) he'l sit at the computer for about 4 hours, frustrating himself and taking it out on other family members.

Here are some Sys Specs:

Intel Pentium 3 @ 733MhZ
128 mb RAM
ATI Radeon 9200 128mb video card *I think*
Soundblaster Live! Audio card.
One Creative 52X MX CD drive
One generic Read\Write drive

Running windows '98 SE


Thanks SO MUCH for any help you can give me, I'm getting desperate.

-Kami

[Advertisements]

right click on my computer > manage > device manager do you see any yellow ?

[dsenette]

right click on my computer > manage > device manager do you see any yellow ?

[D3_Kamikaze]

No yellow.. I dont quite get what you mean though :|

Theres a yellow Exclamation mark on my "PCI communications device" though... is that what you meant?

Also one on "iomega parallel port zip interface"

-Kami

[Fenor]

Hey D3_Kamikaze!

One question to start things off. Are both these CD drives on the same IDE channel? This is easy to check if you don't know. Just take the side panel off the case and check and see if both CD drives are attached to the same cable that is attached to the motherboard.

Fenor

[D3_Kamikaze]

Two seperate IDE channels.

I'm pretty sure.

-Kami

[Fenor]

And you have only one hard drive?

Fenor

[D3_Kamikaze]

Yup, one. Partitoned in two parts though.

Edited by D3_Kamikaze, 14 November 2005 - 07:53 PM.

[Fenor]

Then most likely both your cd-rom drives are on the secondary IDE channel and your hard drive is on the primary. At least that's how it SHOULD be set up, but not necessarily how it IS set up.

When I asked you to check before, did you take off the side panel and physically look and see if both are attached to the same IDE cable?

Fenor

[D3_Kamikaze]

No, I did it by memory... Bad plan I guess, I was wrong >_>

Just took the side panel off, its how you said it was.

Sorry about that.

-Kami

[Fenor]

Okay, what I want you to do is the following:

• Remove the power cord from the back of your computer
• Remove the CMOS battery (it's shiny stainless steel about the size of a nickel)
• Wait 5 minutes minimum
• Put the CMOS battery back in
• Attach the power cord
• Turn your computer on and let it boot up.
• Check and see the state of your cd-rom drives now

Post how things are going after doing this.

Fenor

[D3_Kamikaze]

I can't really fool around inside the Pc right now, so I'l do that tomorow evening. If you could try and get back to me then...

thanks.

-Kami

[Fenor]

Just post a reply in here when you're back tomorrow and we can continue. to elaborate, the CMOS battery is located on the motherboard and is like I said shiny stainless steel about the size of a nickel. It's normally located towards the bottom of the board on most motherboards.

Fenor

[D3_Kamikaze]

Well, I did what you said and it didn't change anything except reseting my clock >_>

Cd drives still not responding.

[Fenor]

Check and see if both the Cd-ROM drivers are jumpered as CABLE SELECT. If they are, change your cd writer to be jumpered as a MASTER and your other CD drive as a SLAVE.

CD ROM's have 6 jumpers that look like: : : :

To jumper as MASTER, pu tthe jumper over the far right ones. For SLAVE, put it over the middle ones.

D . .
D . . <---- This means CABLE SELECT (which is BAD BAD BAD)

. D .
. D . <---- This means SLAVE

. . D
. . D <---- This means MASTER

Of course do all this with your computer powered off. Then turn your computer on and see what happens.

Fenor

[Fenor]

You can also check out this link.

Fenor

Edited by Fenor, 15 November 2005 - 09:28 PM.