Several Windows XP Issues (I think..)

[Jerethi]

Okay folks, here goes.

I'm a little stupped about several items when it comes to my DVD-ROM drive. I have a Lite-on 163D 16x DVD 48x CD drive. Running Windows XP, all updates, on an ECS K7S5A motherboard. When I first installed Windows XP, I belive that device manager listed my DVD-ROM drive using Ultra DMA Mode 2 as the interface, but now it seems to say PIO (despite the fac that "Use DMA if available" is checked) and I cannot for the life of my figure out how this happened. Has anyone else had this problem? When my computer starts up, there is an information screen and I believe for the DVD-ROM drive it lists the interface as ATA 33... can anyone shed some light on how to fix this?

Also, I am not sure if this is related or not, but sometimes I have serious issues when reading DVD's or even just recoginizing one that I've just put in the drive. Most of the time it will load up okay, but on the occassion, it will not recognize the disk, I cannot open my computer, and from that point on I cannot read either CD or DVDs any longer. This problem only seems to occur regularly with DVDs....

Can I assume that these problems are likely OS issues or is there some other gremlin at work here? ANY comments/suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated... thanks for readin!

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Have you tried going into the hardware manager, uninstalling the drive, and rebooting? Also, if you have a spare DVD drive laying around the house () plug that one in for a week and see what kind of trouble you can get into. I'm not sure it will fix any of the serious stuff, but you might consider cleaning the drive as well. You can pick up kits at Office Depot, Staples, etc. That might get rid of CD's not being recognized or read.

nik

 

[WarCon]

I read somewhere in the forums that something like 6 CRC errors will cause the transfer mode to downgrade itself until it stops having them. Don't know what is causing the errors for you, but that is probably why your drive is running in PIO mode while in XP.

...................edit........................
Might try a shorter/different IDE cable for the DVD.

 

[mee987]

in your bios, try changing the drive from "auto detect" to "none." so if your drive is secondary master, go to the drive list and change secondary master to "none"
im not sure why this makes a difference, but i have seen a few people that had a problem like yours that was solved this way.

 

[elkinm]

mee, Do you meen setting the detection of the drive to none so BIOS does not detect it or just set the DMA detecton to none. My friend has this problem with DMA which is cripling his computer but he only has one hard drive and not setting it to none will cause to not be detected in bios oand therefore the drive will not be able to boot into XP. I haven't tried disabling DMA in BIOS though (I think) and I am not sure if that will work or not.

Thanks