Please Help Me Troubleshoot

[TP]

I have an older system: MSI K7T Pro, 700mhz T-bird. I noticed last night as I went to burn a CD (Nero surprised me with a message that I didnt have any devices to burn with) that my secondary IDE controller is messed up, and thus my CDRom Drive and CD/RW are not detected by windows (98SE), and are not listed in Windows Explorer or anything. (They are both on the secondary IDE))

Here is the Device Manager error message: Error Message (This pic is from after I tried reinstalling the controllers, so the CD/RW is not listed at all here)

The only thing I have done of late is install memory, about 3 weeks ago. I put in an unbranded-cheapo-$40-gamble 512mb/PC133 chip (I didnt want to spend good money for good ram when I hope to upgrade to a DDR system within the year). I noticed around that same time, maybe a week later, that my system was taking longer to boot than was normal for me (Its usually really fast). I couldnt find anything wrong til last night when I got an error message in Nero.

First I tried reinstalling the VIA drivers, which didnt work of course, then I removed the controllers and let Windows reinstall them. Windows did re-install them fine, but it still booted back up with the same problem. I ran diagnostics and have no other noticeable software problems. I quickly (it was late) tried to find something to test my hardware with, and ran Norton Utilities. I didnt know it had a utility to test hardware. Everything in my system that it had a test for passed, except (surprise surprise) the memory. Here I have been going along thinking I took a good risk...Now I know I wasted my $40. My system has seemed to enjoy the ram, even under heavy loads, But I guess Ive just never used enough of it to get to a bad chip of it, or whatever.

I am going to put my old memory back in and test everything, when I get home from work today...I just thought I would post this and see if any of you guys have any thoughts, to help me get to the root of this. Do you think a bad memory chip could produce this problem, even though the system seems to be running fine with it? Or, is there possibly a problem on my mobo? Or is it maybe an OS problem that developed? Thanks for any input...

 

[WarCon]

I am not sure how memory would tie into the problem unless it has somehow caused you to corrupt your registry or driver files.

Try switching master slave designations for the two cds (with the jumpers). If that produces no change then pull one off and try it. If no help put the other one back on and pull the one that was on. Still no help you could try slaving one on the hard drives (primary) to test the drives.

You could do this first though. Boot on a windows boot disk with cdrom support and see if the dos drivers will see them. If it does, then you are looking at specific corrupted files and I am not sure which ones it would be in win2k. If thats the case though, you could run a new post for people with win2k.


P.S. Can't see your link.

 

[somethingwitty]

need to copy and paste to see the link, or, after clicking it, left click on and drag the IE icon (in the top left) to the address bar

 

[TP]

warcon: Those are great suggestions and know that I will be trying that out. I have had little problems at times with the my CDRom Drive and I shouldve thought of that.

Witty: that is a cool trick for dragging the IE ICon. I learned something else new today.

Why is it that sometimes posting pics works like this, then other times it doesnt show up? thanks guys.

The pic is on the bottom of this page: Error Message

 

[TP]

Sure enough, it was the cdrom drive. I have never had one just die on me before, but it all makes sense. Fortunately, I dont really need 2 drives, so just the CDRW will do for now. I am just glad I didnt push too hard in other directions to make trouble for myself somewhere else. Thanks again.