Disappearing IDE CD Drives on Soyo Draon Plus

[mooseAndSquirrel]

A new problem on a soyo d+ system that has been stable for a few months, has the 2BA1 BIOS and I haven't changed any BIOS Settings, has the Via 4.37 drivers.

Here's the deal:

When I boot now, occassionally the IDE detection does not see the CD/DVD on IDE 3 and 4 (I boot off of IDE 1, IDE 2 is empty and I use the Raid controller on the board for a RAID 0 Array).

The drives don't show up; I'll soft reboot or reset and go into BIOS and try to detect them and they still don't show up.

Then I power down and back up and presto, they're baaaaack.

But then, I was just in Windows XP *in the middle of ripping some MP3's* and they disappeared in the middle of my session! The always unhelpful XP event log says:

"The device 'HP CD-Writer+ 9900j' (IDE\CdRomHP_CD-Writer+_9900j_____________________1.30____\5&2dfcc752&0&0.1.0) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal."

The only thing I've done on a hardware basis is start using a firewire drive, connected to my audigy ex's firewire port. But I've since powered the drive down and disconnected the cable and am still having this annoying problem.

Any ideas, oh gurus? I may flash to the BA3 BIOS, but don't see why this problem should be starting after a couple of months of stability. I'd blame Nero (I just added InCD), but since it doesn't show up at boot, I have to assume the problem is before Windows ever gets involved.

 

[MSNY]

<< occassionally the IDE detection does not see the CD/DVD on IDE 3 and 4 (I boot off of IDE 1, IDE 2 is empty and I use the Raid controller on the board for a RAID 0 Array). >>



This board ahs some support issues with DVD's, CDROMs and CDRW's on the Promise controller. MS has also realesed an update for CD burners with Win xp, you can get it at Windows Update its Q320174.

For more information and a good setup guide I've written try here:

Dragon + Setup guide

Hope this helps !

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Thanks. I'm acutally quite familiar with your posts on AMDMB and they've helped me a lot.

My main question/concern is that on a reboot, the drives are not detected by the posting process. It's hard to see how Windows or Via or Promise drivers would have anything to do with that??

Also, this system has been fine for a few months. I'd blame InCD (packet writing software definitely has "issues"), but I still can't see how that would effect boot discovery.

 

[MSNY]

I'd try the MS burner update I edited above: Q320174

Also there is much better support with the BA2 BIOS, but I would resolve this issue first.

Ya, I like the Soyo forumn over there but I was a member here for a lot longer !

 

[Jeff7]

This is really interesting, because I am having the exact same problem - on a Shuttle AK35GTR.

My HDD's are on the primary chain; my DVD and CD-RW are on the secondary, and sometimes the BIOS doesn't detect them on bootup.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Jeff - if you hit a resolution, let me know. I'll try BIOS and the XP CD thing (even though it's a problem before XP gets started). I have both HP drives: a 9900i cdrw and a dvd100i dvd+rw. I've not used my 3rd stick of RAM because of the BIOS problems (even BA2), but may crack the case and try again with the BA3 BIOS. If I do, then I'll re-check the cabling.

Pain in the neck.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

I just flashed to the BA3 BIOS. In reviewing the BIOS settings, I see that UDMA was disabled for all of the IDE chains. WTF? So I enabled them to AUTO. We'll see - I've been rock solid for five minutes!

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Well, no joy. I had the device manager open and I'm surfing the web. My mouse appears to freeze for a minute, and then the drives disappear from the device manager. No yellow exclamation marks or anything else. Same message in the even viewer from the "Plug Play Manager".

Oh, and I had also done the Windows update CD patch.

While I'm pretty sure this problem started before InCD, I'm probably going to uninstall it and see how that goes.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

Hey MSNY - do you have any pointers to *complete* BIOS settings for the dragon plus? I think I solved my problem (at least it appears so) by tweaking the AGP settings (everything is pretty much disabled). Every guide I see talks about memory settings, but not some of the more esoteric BIOS settings.

Although I did break the cardinal rule of troubleshooting - I changed multiple things. I also uninstalled InCD and it's "shadow" CD. I'll put it back soon and see if the problem returns.

 

[HeresyDW]

I seem to be having a similar problem with a Soltek DRV2.

Only happens from a cold start.

Periodically when the system boots it will not detect one or two of the drives on the primary ide channel. A hot reboot always picks up the drives.

Also, it has definately gotten worse since installing a SCSI CD-R.

I started thinking possibly a power supply issue (too small), but that's just speculation.