4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 26th, 2005 17:00

pflower:

I suspect you have not set both drive jumpers to cable select. Check that first, then make sure the IDE connectors are all firmly seated on the drives and at the motherboard.

67 Posts

March 26th, 2005 18:00

I am having the same type problem.  My CD-RW drive stopped working, so I went and bought a Sony CD-R/RW drive to replace.  Now my computer does not recognize the cd/rom or the new cd/r/rw.  How do you check to see if they are set to cable select?
 
Thanks for your help.
 
Melynda

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 26th, 2005 18:00

On the side of the drive where the power and IDE connectors go, there will be several pairs of pins, two of which have a small plastic jumper that closes the connection between them. Usually, there is a diagram on top of the drive that shows which pair are for master, slave or cable select. You may need to pull the drive completely out of the computer to see.

Here's a good picture showing what you need to look for:

http://netscape.com.com/4520-6603_7-5118840-4.html

67 Posts

March 26th, 2005 23:00

Thank you very much!  That was the problem.  I appreciate you explaining and showing the picture, so I could understand what to do!  LOL

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 00:00

that's really great that Melynda was able to fix her problem. However, oddly enough, my Dimension 8200 is still not finding the drives. (yeah, now it doesnt even find the DVD drive.) and even weirder is that when I restarted it after checking to see if they were set to cable select and firmly pressing in the IDE connectors to the drives, now I don't get any error message. However, something is still up because when I go to "My Computer" I don't see either drive listed. And I still can't burn any cds.
 
thanks for the link though, osprey. it helped me to understand more. but my computer, before i ever touched anything, originally had both drives set to Cable Select. so I guess that is not the problem.
 
the only thing I can suggest now is maybe the BIOS(only reason I know what that is is because I've been searching around for some info on all this.)As the computer is restarting, when I press F2 to go to setup, I notice in the BIOS that 3 drives are set to OFF. I don't know if I should set them to AUTO?
 
well, I am obviously at a loss here. so anyone please help. would be much appreciated. i just want my system back to normal like it was before all this DVD Burner installation occured.
 
Peace~

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 00:00

oops I am sorry...somehow I posted this twice on the forum. please moderator, feel free to take off one posting so there is only one.

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 27th, 2005 09:00

pflower:

The drives need to be turned on in the BIOS. Use the old Force IDE device redetect trick: boot to system setup, turn on caps lock, scroll lock, & number lock. Press ALT+E then ALT+F, save settings & exit.

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 27th, 2005 10:00

It's all in your manual. So dust that thing off and take a look.

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 10:00

thank you very much-I do not know that trick though so can you explain in more detail? how do I "boot to system setup" and when do I press all those buttons?

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 16:00

well, it looks like that didn't work either. was that suppose to only turn one of my drives to an Unknown Device setting, and still leave 2 drives "OFF"? it did an IDE reconfiguration...

well it didn't work so I hope someone out there has some idea of what I can do now. this is really peculiar.

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 27th, 2005 17:00

Ok, try this. Unplug both drives, boot into system setup, turn both off and shut down. Plug in one device only to the end connector (this is the master position), boot into system setup and turn secondary master on, then reboot and see if Windows finds the drive. If so, repeat the process for the other drive.

This will reveal if it is a problem with one drive or the other.

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 21:00

Thank You. I am assuming by "secondary master" you meant "Secondary Drive 0" and by "on" you meant "AUTO"? because there was no "on" option. when I press space bar it toggles between on and AUTO. doing AUTO makes it an Unknown Device. Anyway I did that testing the DVD drive first (since it was working before) but not much luck there.I got an error message saying secondary drive not found.

any other ideas are most welcome. Thanks again.

4 Operator

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34.2K Posts

March 27th, 2005 23:00

Ok, did you try connecting each drive, one at a time as I suggested?

22 Posts

March 27th, 2005 23:00

Yes, I connected the DVD drive with the cd drive disconnected and I connected the cd drive with the DVD drive disconnected. both drives give same results. "secondary drive not found.":smileysad:

22 Posts

March 28th, 2005 00:00

Alright, well I have some good news. I connected both drives again and closed my computer (much more firmly this time) and seems like that made a difference. Because when I turned on my computer, not only did I not get an error message but when I looked in "My Computer", lo and behold-I saw Drive E (the cd drive) and Drive D (the DVD Drive). The DVD Drive works just fine. So at least now I can play cds and DVDs. However, my problem is not yet totally solved because...when I put a cd into the cd drive I get an error message: "E:/ is not accessibe: Incorrect function" and another message "E:/ is not accessible: The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable." *sigh*

ok, I don't know much about all this but I do know that the word corrupted does not sound very promising. If this error message sounds familiar, can anyone troubleshoot it for me and give me some things to try and correct it? (I was thinking of doing the IDE reconfiguration thing but I am scared :smileytongue: because now at least I have my DVD Drive and I don't want to make it worse again.) I need a real surefire solution.

Thanks in advance.

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