Optiplex GX520 doesn't recognize any CDROM I swap in

Hi kduck28,

Make sure the drive jumper is set to cable select. If that does not help, double check the data cable connection.

Ah, no luck. The CS pin didn't work either. Must be the cable I guess. Which really doesn't make sense because the LTN-4891S drive has no problems with the existing cable.

Is it an 80-wire cable?

You have just highlighted something I didn't realize about these cables. So the all cables have the 40 pin connectors but the difference is within the wiring of the cable itself. I do have a number of spare 80 wired IDE cables. So, I'll give that a try. By using a different cable should I also put the jumper pin on Master instead of Cable Select?

Still should be cable select.

I'm glad you mentioned the cable. I haven't used a 40-wire cable in a while and might not have thought of it.

It's been awhile. But I thought I add more information about this issue. I had put this to rest because I figured the machine's original drive (LITE-ON LTN-4891S), is broken and I really didn't want to spend money on an old system. But it bothered me to no end. I discovered I had an old Samsung CD-ROM model SC-140B collecting dust in the closet. I installed it using the cable select jumper and the existing drive cable. Everything worked. I did make an attempt with another DVD drive from Sony but with that drive the machine wouldn't even boot into the desktop. Must be something about the machine which I'm missing because the BIOS does recognize each drive (Samsung DVD, Sony DVD, and the Samsung CD-ROM). However only the Samsung CD-ROM works. I could surely use some help to figure out why the DVD drives fail to either boot or work once I'm into the Windows desktop.

Gees! Why didn't I do this from the beginning. I tried the Sony DVD drive again but this time I didn't insert the master/slave/cable select pin jumper. When I booted into the BIOS it read unknown. When I booted into Windows the drive was detected correct as Sony CD-RW CRX320EE. This drive also reads DVD-ROM. So I'm good to go.

More to this story. In that scenario I just mentioned, I used the Sony CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

Oooops! Bad news. Yes Windows did detect the drive but I should add this. After I installed the drive, booted the PC, I hit F2 to see if the BIOS detected the drive. It listed it as "unknown". When I existed the BIOS, the PC continued to boot to the Windows desktop. Then I open the device manager and the drive was listed. But when I booted the PC without first going into the BIOS, I received a disk error that the PC was unable to find the drive on port PATA1 drive #2. The message indicated I need to hit F1 to enter BIOS setup or F2 to continue. F2 proceeds with the Windows desktop boot. When its done I then can see the drive. This is good but having to first hit F2 after receiving the error message in wrong. That shouldn't happen.

Do you have two optical drives and are you sure both are CS?

Ok. I only have one optical drive. After doing a little more research, I was resolved to try the follow.

1. Shutdown PC

2. Disconnected the Sony drive

3. Reboot and edit BIOS to turn off PATA-0

4. PC reboots to Windows and I removed the existing Primary IDE Channel setting

5. Shutdown PC and connect the Sony drive to the IDE controller (jumpered to CS)

6. Reboot PC to BIOS and turn on PATA-0, boot continued to Windows desktop sucessfully

7. Windows asked to reinstall the Primary IDE Channel, completed successfully, reboot

8. Back to Windows desktop and check the Primary IDE Channel setting: it was set PIO Only

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9. I changed the setting to DMA if available and rebooted

10. As Windows was loading the process locked up. Had to force the shutdown and started room step 3

This PC is unable to or can't support DMA on the IDE interface. PIO mode is the only thing that works. I updated the BIOS to version A11 but that didn't change anything for this issue.

This PC will only load the DMA mode when I remove the jumper from all of the drive's pins. In this configuration, I first receive the "Drive 2 not found: Parallel  ATA, PATA-0 error message. I have to hit F1 to continue to Windows. So then, the BIOS detects the drive's name as unknown where as Windows correctly detects the drives name. And Windows sets the Primary IDE Channel setting in DMA mode. I'm ticked now and don't what to blame Windows stinking drivers or Dell's motherboard workmanship.  Well it's an old PC and I got it cheap. What should I expect. Rant over.

After all the back and forth with this issue, it came down someone the IT department doing something strange to the Windows XP Pro SP3 installation on the machine. The PC was purshased as is from an company auction. So who knows what happened. maybe it could also be a corrupted reqistery. Bottom-line, no CD-RW/DVD-ROM would work in this PC.

My solution was to place my spare 160GB ATA/IDE hard drive in the PC as the master device and use the Sony CD-RW/DVD-ROM as the slave device and installed Windows XP Home SP3. Once that was completed I checked the properties of the Primary IDE Channel which indicated UDMA Mode 5 for "device 0" and UDMA Mode 2 for "device 1". So this was not a hardward or BIOS issue.