Windows ain't seeing my burner

  • Thread starter Thread starter dachay2tnr
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dachay2tnr

dachay2tnr

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Strange problem for you genuises of silicon...

My mobo has four seperate IDE controllers. Two standard IDE controllers and two ATA-100 controllers. Right now I have my C:\ drive hdd as the master on IDE1, my CD burner and CD-ROM are master and slave respectively on IDE2, and I have another hdd as the master on one of the ATA-100.

When I boot, the BIOS sees everything fine. But intermittently when I get to windows I find I have no CD drives. Usually I can reboot once or twice and the problem will be fixed. Yesterday and today, though, several reboots did not fix the problem.

Any ideas? For info. I am running Win ME. It appears as if windows is not seeing the IDE2 controller - but I don't understand that when the BIOS is recognizing it fine.

TIA
 
I do not know this for a fact because I do not use/hate ME. If it were me, I would go back to Windows 98SE. I think it's a much more stable OS. That said, If you must use ME I believe there's a bug fix for this on Microsoft's web site. You should first try the Window's update site and see if it shows up. There have been several updates to ME. Of course it could also be a hardware problem. Make sure your cables are plugged in well, etc. Good luck!
 
If your mobo uses a VIA chipset, I would download the latest VIA 4in1 drivers.

Also, I assume the IDE controllers show up normally in Control Panel / Device Manager, with no errors?
 
My guess at the momemt would either be a faulty cable or faulty drive. I've seen similar things happen when CDROM drives have gone bad.

Before we commit to making any ugly hardware changes, try moving the CDROM's to the second ATA-100 channel. Or better yet, put each CDROM on its own channel, since you've got 4. With each drive isolated, the root of the problem might be considerably easier to spot!

Slackmaster 2000
 
Keep the responses coming, boys. I'm not at home, so I'll have to wait until tonight to try some of your suggestions.

Slack - I'm confused as to why you think this might be a hardware problem. If it were hardware, wouldn't the BIOS not see them as well. Yet when I boot, I see the BIOS detecting the drives just fine. It's only Windows that doesn't see them. Also, generally when I reboot, the problem usually goes away and the drives work fine until I shut the computer down again. Also, I can try moving things around, which may fix the problem, but it will still leave me wondering what was wrong in the first place. Up until now I've just lived with it, since it was intermittent and relatively easy to fix with a reboot. But I've finally decided the time has come to investigate and fix the thing.

RWhite, it's a BX chipset, not VIA. I'll have to check the IDE controllers in Control Panel tonight. My suspicion however is that the IDE2 Controller is not being recognized - since both CD's are on that controller.

Monte, I'll check for Win ME updates. I turned off the annoying reminder message that comes with Win ME, so I have forgotten to check on updates. Also, I have a tendency to reformat the boot drive and reinstall the OS on this computer every couple of months - which in hindsight means I lose any updates I might have downloaded in the past. Duh.
 
could be that windows installed the wrong busmaster driver...

windows ME is notorious for this and windows 98 does it sometimes too...

get the busmaster drivers from the mobo's homepage...

This problem happened with me a few years back when I installed ME on my parents computer and I've seen it happen on other machines with ME...

took me forever to figure it out too... everything was working on the IDE controllers but the CDROM which was working when the computer started up at the bios... yep I suspect that damn ME installed the wrong busmaster drivers.

P.S... a way you can check this is to boot into safe mode... if you see the CDROM then, it is a driver issue, most likely the wrong busmaster was installed.
 
One other possibility

Had my CD drives disappear on me the other day as well (on my Win2K Server). Turned out to be a result of uninstalling a CD-R program I wasn't happy with. Apparentely the program installed some adaptec drivers and make some changes to the registry, but did not revert things back to normal when it uninstalled. This caused both CD drives to go 'bye, bye' within Windows, but the bios saw them just fine. Found the solution on Microsoft's support site. Only reason I was able to track this down was because Win2K logged the failure in the 'Event Log'...Unfortunately, WinME doesn't log this type of stuff.

Do you have any Adaptec CD burning software installed or no longer installed? If so, this might be at fault.

Just another thing to check if the busmaster driver thing doesn't pan out...although, I betting that's what it is.
 
Looney - yeah, I have DirectCD and EZ CD Creator installed. I really don't use EZ CD, but I do use DirectCD to read/write to CD-RW's.

What was the fix?

You know, you just reminded me that I have an update for EZ CD that I downloaded from Adaptec. Can't recall if I reinstalled last time I formatted my HDD.

Hmmmm... one more thing to try tonight.
 
OK, here's last night's results...

Upgraded Adaptec EZ CD from 4.01 to 4.02. No help. Went to Adaptec's website and found an update to 4.05. Downloaded and installed - no help.

Went to Abit's web site to look for a new PCI Bus Master Driver. Nothing there - just BIOS updates, and I have the next to most recent BIOS rsion already installed. Any idea how to tell which bus master driver you should be using? I tried to run a driver update, but Windows told me I was already using the most up to date driver.

Went to MS website to look for Win ME updates. Only thing offered to me were security updates. Nothing that appeared at all related to my problem (such as a new service pack, or such).

One new and interesting phenomenon, on one of my boots last night the CD burner showed up in Windows, but my CD-ROM did not. This makes me suspicious that it's not the IDE controller.

Tonight I may try removing EZ CD Creator altogether. I have heard others who think this program is the devil incarnate.

Any additional thoughts?
 
yes boot into safe mode. if both cd devices show up in safe mode, you can be pretty sure it is a driver issue, more than likely the wrong bus master.

If thats what it is, then give us the specs on your mobo (brand, model, etc..) and we will be happy to help you locate the appropriate drivers.

Josh
 
After checking the M$ support site, I realized the issue I was having seems to be related to NT and 2K only, so I doubt the fix I used will work for you. It's still possible that it's related to the Adaptec software though, as you said, it's the 'Devil Incarnate'. ;)
 
Yeah, I'm beginning to think it's Adaptec also. I found a tech paper on the MS Web Site related to CD's not appearing:

"After you install Windows Media Player 7 with the Roxio (Adaptec) CD Burning Plug-in component, any of the following symptoms may occur: Some of your CD drives (CD-ROM, CD-R, or CD-RW drives) might not appear."

They say the fix is to update to newer versions of EZ CD Creator and DirectCD (the devil incarnate :) ). I already did the former last night, but I was unable to download the update for DirectCD. I'll try that again tonight - as this sounds suspicously like the problem I'm having (Media Player 7 is included with Win ME I believe).

If that don't fix it, I'm just going to dump the whole Adaptec program. Anybody know of any good packet writing software (freeware preferably) that can read/write to CD-RW's like they are a hard drive??
 
Jdechant - actually when you boot into Safe Mode, your CD drives are disabled. So that would not be a good troubleshooting move.

Dachay2tnr - I've used all the EZCDs since 3, using 5 now, but I've never used Direct CD. Because I never use CDRWs, only CDRs. I've heard horror stories like yours - i's supposed to be particular grusome in Windows XP.

If you check a post I put up a few months ago, all of the EZCD programs overwrite some windows system files that deal with the USB ports, among other things. There is a fix for this, also avilable at Sandisks site. But it doesn't sound like its related to your problem.

So far as the Bus Driver goes, I suspect you have the right one, it was a massively popular chipset and all the drivers for it are built into Windows already.
 
LOL....i just installed my Audiophile card again yesterday on Windows Me, and havin' the same problems. Now i know um not alone but i disabled the Audiophile Card in the Device Manager and my CD-Rom drive is workin' now with no problem.


It seems dat our Soundcards is havin' a resource conflict with the IDE Controllers.

So what um thinkin' is we have to Disable the IDE Controller until we get finish using our soundcard, then we can enable it after we get finish using the soundcard. This is the only way right now dat i found out how to get around it.

I did'nt have this trouble with Windows 2000, so i don't know whats up with Win Me.



Take my advice "dachay2tnr". :):):)
 
Well, I uninstalled EZ CD (but not Direct CD). Both CD's are now appearing in Windows.

However, as I said when I started this thread, the problem was intermittent in the first place. So I'm gonna keep my eye on them for awhile and see if they stick around. I'll keep you all posted as to the disposition.

RWhite, I have also used EZ CD for a couple of years. It came with the first burner I purchased, and despite all the knocks it takes, I never had problems with it before. However, based on the Microsoft tech stuff I posted above, and my experience so far tonight, I may be changing my tune.

If I continue to have no problems with EZ CD not being installed, I certainly will be looking for a new CD writing program. (BTW, I use Wavelab for Audio CD''s, so I'm OK on that front.)

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this one.
 
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