weird scsi problem

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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I have a scsi pioneer dvd rom and plextor cdrw hooked up to my scsi card... adaptec of some kind but my optical drives don't work. Windows recognizes my scsi card, and my optical drives even show up in the device manager, but not in My Computer. Does anyone know why this could be? I"ve tried changing pci slots for my card, and using a different scsi card that I have, but the same thing happens each time. Also, I am able to boot from my drives just fine using a windows cd.... so they do work, windows just doesn't recognize them I guess. Looking for any ideas, thanks.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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Yeah, I've tried putting cd's in the drives but nothing happens. Also, I tried opening Nero but it doesn't recognize any optical drives in my pc either. But they both show up in the device manager, and windows reports them as working fine.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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I think I'm just going to try formatting and reinstalling windows, unless someone comes up with any other ideas.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
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Mar 4, 2000
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Have you checked Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management? That is where drive letter changes are made and conflicts can sometimes be resolved there. If more than one device has the same drive letter, it won't show up.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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In disk managment it doesn't show any optical drives. Are you suggesting that I change some of my hard drive drive letters to see if they show up?
 

Big Lar

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Oct 16, 1999
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Its probably the scsi ID of the drives, If your controller has a bios, look and see if it is detecting the drives correctly, and if it dosn't, perhaps the ID of the drives are conflicting,ie; both are set to ID4 or whatever. The jumpers on the rear of the drives are for ID, and Termination, which brings us to the second part; you need to make sure that either the last drive on the cable,(chain), is terminated via a jumper on the drive, or is actively terminated on the cable.
Also, you will need to make sure the first,(and any drives inbetween) do Not have the jumper to the terminate position. Hope this helps.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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My pioneer drive which is at the end of the chain is set to id 2, and is terminated. My plextor cdrw is set to id 4. So they should be set up to work properly, since they were working fine in my old pc at these settings. One thing though, I am no longer able to boot from a cd from either drive. So I am thinking that it may be incompitable with my motherboard, a dfi lanparty 250ut.
 

Big Lar

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Oct 16, 1999
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Have you checked in bios as to see if the Board bios recognize's the drives? Also, you prob need to set boot order in bios.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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The motherboard's bios does not recognize the drives, I can't remember if it did before or not. Only the scsi card bios recognizes them. Thanks for the suggestions though.
 

tom314

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Feb 13, 2004
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Ok, I checked the motherboard bios again and I tried setting "bootable add-in cards" to boot first hoping that would at least let me boot from a cd, but that didn't work either. Even though my scsi bios recognizes that I have a bootable cd in the drive.
 

Zepper

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May 1, 2001
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Install the latest version of the drivers for that scsi adapter and also install the latest ASPI drivers that you can DL from adaptec.com.
.bh.

:moon:
 

Big Lar

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Oct 16, 1999
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Well, the Mobo bios prob won't actually say what the drive is, but should detect it as a scsi cdrom. I'd check power connectors to the drive, connections of the cable to the drive and the Host adapter. For a last ditch effort, there is something called Interupt 19,( going by memory here, but I believe thats it), in the mobo bios, at least in mine... you may want to try enabling that and trying a complete boot and see what gives. If it dosn't work, just go back and disable it in bios.

It also won't hurt to look in Device Manager as to settings there pertaining to scsi and Ide. A bit too tired here to think of anything else, sorry.