Well, other than the price premium you pay for SCSI
Honestly, if the drive only gives you problems with that one disc, I'd blame the cd-rw. Standardization notwithstanding, cd-rw reading on many drives tends to be kind of spotty. I'm not expert on optical media, but as I understand it the wavelength used on cd-rws is substantially different than that on cd-rs, not to mention normal discs. Also, as drives age, I think their lens calibration starts to kind of drift, and cd-rw reading usually seems to be one of the first things to crap out. If you can, try reading it in a different drive. Maybe take it to friend's house or something if necessary. I've had a couple of cs-rws that displayed similar symptoms.
If it's not just that disc, then I'd be inclined to just get another drive. CD-ROM drives just aren't the most durable pieces of equipment in the world. I've found their failure rate to be probably the highest out of any component in most systems. Fortunately, they're not too expensive anymore. Just go to your local Fry's (or equivalent) and pick up another one. Worst case, it won't help and you'll have to take it back.
If it's not the disc or the drive.... well, it's possible your IDE controller is going haywire. That doesn't seem too likely, but I guess it could happen.
--------------------------------------------
Hold up a sec. I just had a thought.
Try taking the SB Live! out. I know VIA's fix is supposed to be in all the recent 4in1s and all, but this nasty bug-a-boo might just be your problem. If it's not the cd-rw or the drive, then dollars to donuts it's the sound card. Those things wreak all kinds of havoc on the system bus. If your sound's popping and stuff, I'm even more inclined to say that's the problem. Try taking the card out and see if things improve. If they do, then you probably really need to flash the BIOS. My I-Will KK266 (kt133a) board was totally unreliable when I had my SB Live! in. I took it out and used the onboard sound and it ran flawlessly. After a BIOS flash to the latest version a couple of months ago, I decided to put the Live! back in and it's been running like a champ ever since. No problems at all. Your mileage may vary of course, but the more I think about it, the stronger my feeling that this is your problem.
Quick (well, maybe not
) word on flashing the BIOS (in case you've never done it.) There are, of course, horror stories all over these forums about BIOS flashes gone awry. I'm sure it happens. But, it's not really very likely just as long as you're very,
very careful. (Read: paranoid/anal retentive :roll
. Preferably, use a brand new floppy. If not, at least try to use one that's had a minimum of wear and tear. Whatever the case, run a
thorough scandisk check on it before you try flashing from it. Make
sure there's no bad sectors lurking in there. You
don't want the disk to fail at a crucial moment. Other than that, read the flashing instructions carefully, don't try to flash from windows, etc., etc. Also make double sure of the integrity of the downloaded file (i.e. check the CRCs).
Don't be scared
It's really not that big a deal. Just be careful and you'll be fine. Good luck!
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