CD-ROM has CD-RW error message: Insert blank disk. HUH!

Question

Hi all,Troubleshooting a friend's Dell Dimension 2350, Bios Rev A02, running XP Home Edition. The Dell box came oem-equipped with a CD-RW, and CD-ROM, both attached to the secondary IDE port. Has a user-acquired Bose Wave sound system attached. Has run trouble-free since purchase and first set-up. Used often to copy music CDs with ROXIO Easy Creator 5, the latter recently updated. Recently the CD-RW died and I replaced it with a LITE-ON Combo that shows up in Device Manager as ATAPI CDR DH52R2P. The original oem CD-ROM shows in the Device Manager as HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8481B.Both show in My Computer, with the CD-ROM as Drive D: and the new LITE-ON as Drive E: This corresponds to their order in the drive bays, with the CD-ROM on top, plugged into the Master end of the IDE cable and the new LITE-ON under the old CD-ROM, plugged into the second IDE connector, jumpered as 'slave.' I did not inspect the jumper in the CD-ROM but since it worked before, assumed it was OK.The new LITE-ON plays through the Bose Wave flawlessly, BUT when you try to burn a CD from the old CD-ROM, the following error message occurs, upon placing a music CD into the CD-ROM: 'Insert a blank disk.' This makes no sense because it is an error message that would normally be associated with the burner, not the player. I removed both optical drives from Device Manager and rebooted, to allow XP to rediscover and reinstall the hardware and drivers. All remains the same.  My only remaining ideas are these: (1) Remove Easy Creator, then remove and reinstall the drives again, then reinstall Easy Creator. (2) Swap the physical drive positions to set the higher UDMA LITE-ON drive as the Master with CSEL jumper setting, and the lower UDMA CD-ROM jumpered as slave.  I know this machine and its sound system has been in use for more than a couple of years. Any possibility this older drive is just plain dead in one of those annoying hard-to-find optical drive ways? Thanx for some peer review! Ionma1

Skybird · Answer

Set the jumper on both drives to the Cable Select positions and place
the burning drive on the end of the cable.

Or, set the jumper on the burning drive at the end of the cable to the
Master position and The jumper on the CD-ROM drive at the middle of the
cable to the Slave position.

Do one of the above and let's see where thing end up.

Storage, Drives & Media

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