Now Zip 250 drive NOT OPENING DISKS

[Lysimachus]

Just yesterday I was popping zip disks in and opening them fine. But now all of a sudden, I come home from school for the first time since last night when I copied files off of zip disks on to the computer, and disks will not open!

I pop in a zip disk, and it basically hangs or freezes on me. I cannot click any icons and the disk keeps making noise like it's trying to read them, but cannot do so. But that is the way it is with every disk drive or icon as long as the disk is in. Just if the zip disk is sitting in the zip drive, it takes FOREVER to open just Drive C: or D:....or just open any icon in particular. But as soon as I eject the disk, everything frees up and runs normally. So not only can I not read or open the disk, it nearly freezes everything else up from functioning properly.

 

[Viper96720]

Man your having some bad luck.

 

[Lysimachus]

Thanx for the encouragement!


anyone?


*note, I have not installed the Zip Drive drivers as of yet. Could that make a difference?*

 

[QTPie]

Try to delete the driver so that the OS will reinstall it after rebooting. Is it a internal IDE drive? You might try to enable DMA channel for it. It's possible that your disk is defective. Good luck.

 

[Lysimachus]

No, it does it to all disks. I tried a different IDE cable, and it still does the same thing. But I found out something interesting. I thought that it wasn't detecting period, but I realize now that it is just extremely slow...slowing down not only how long the zip disk opens, but slowing down everything on the computer.

But it is so terribly slow at opening, that only one who is patient to sit and wait for the disk to open in like 2+ minutes will discover it....

Also, this was taking place before I installed any Zip Drive tools/drivers. The CD really isn't considered "drivers", just "Solutions". In installed the Zip Solutions CD just incase it would help. It made no difference.

 

[QTPie]

go to Hardware Manager to see if DMA is enable.
Also check in the BIOS for LBA and UDMA.
try to set the jumper either master or slave (not cable select).
swap the drive around.
Good luck

 

[Lysimachus]

Alright, an interesting dilemma has transpired.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION CAREFULLY TO MY PROCEDURES:

I decided to narrow down this problem by testing another zip drive. I have another Zip Drive on my old system down stairs. It is a Zip 100. It works and has always worked fine.

The Zip Drive that I am having problems with is the 250 upstairs on my new system. I decided to swap drives to see if the problem is with the Zip Drive 250, or the motherboard. I took out the 250, and plugged in the 100 on the new system exactly the same as I had the 250 plugged in (Slave to the Hard Drive, but on end of IDE cable).

The Zip 100 worked PERFECTLY! Zip disks opened smoothly, and computer ran smoothly. At this point I thought that I had definitely discovered the problem. I now "felt sure" that the 250 drive was just a bad drive. But JUST TO MAKE SURE, I thought I should test the 250 on the old computer downstairs and hook it in place of the 100. I hooked it exactly as the 100 was. NOW THE 250 JUST AS SMOOTHLY AS THE 100, AND IN MANY CASES SEEMED TO DETECT EVEN FASTER!

This really put a monkey wrench on my narrowing down of the situation. The last thing now that I can think of is that there is something peculiar about my new System's motherboard/drivers/OS that does not like SPECIFICALLY about 250 drives. The 100 works fine on both systems. The 250 only works fine, and even excellent, on the old system downstairs.


So tell me, what do you think this could mean?

*Remember, take not of my procedures carefully so that you don't tell me to perform stuff I've already tried before.*

 

[Lysimachus]

Interesting huh?:Q

 

[GrumpyMan]

I thought the end of the cable was for a master drive yet you put the jumper as a slave?

 

[Lysimachus]

The end of an IDE cable is a master ONLY when the devices are set to "Cable Select" on the jumpers. That is what "Cable Select" is for. It is so the IDE cable automatically decides what will be the Master and what will be the Slave. But to manually decide is to move the jumpers around. I learned this interesting fact in PC Configuration class. I have had it hooked this way since the very beginning on my old system, and it has always worked fine. Zip Drive on end of IDE cable, but jumper set to Slave, HD on middle of cable, but set to Master. This one guy who has built literally hundreds of computers originally set it that way for me when I was first learning how to build a computer.

Tell me, how else are you supposed to do it? Do you realize that you would have to put your Zip Drive UNDER the Hard Drive in order to line it up the way you are saying. You'd have to ferociously twist up your cable in order to put the HD on the end, and Zip Drive on the middle of the IDE.

And there is no way to make the Zip Drive the slave to the CD-ROM, because no way does the middle of the IDE cable reach the Zip Drive! It is way to far away. Case is too big.