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camdad

2 Posts

15506

October 10th, 2007 18:00

BIOS can't see primary slave DVD-RW

Hello, everyone!
 
                           I have an XPS 400 - my wife broke the tray on the DVD-RW and I replaced it with a Pioneer 112D DVD-RW, being careful to set the new jumper to CS.  When I started the computer I hear two quick beeps and the bios displaying the error message "no primary slave found".
 I pressed F1 to continue and the computer booted up normally.  I looked in Device Manager and the new DVD-RW was recognised correctly to my great surprise!  I then checked the Primary slave IDE controller and it was there also, except listed as "PIO only", although I had "DMA if available" checked.  I ran the Dell diagnostics and it said the drive and cables were fine.  I changed the jumpers on both optical drives to "master" and "slave" hoping this would force the bios to see the drive but it didn't help. I can burn both CD's and DVD's using Nero 6.
 
                           But I know there must be something wrong - I get the bios error message everytime I boot, and I have to press F1 to continue - and my 16X DVD burner will only burn at 8x using PIO only! 
                            Can anyone help me- I cannot figure out what is wrong! 

Skybird

10.9K Posts

October 10th, 2007 20:00

Jumper the pioneer as the Master and the other drive as the Slave.  Then, make
sure the Pioneer is on the end of the cable and the other drive is in the middle.
This may require you to switch the drive locations in the tower. 

Upon boot-up, enter the Set-up and check that the channels for both drives are
set to ON or AUTO. 

camdad

2 Posts

October 11th, 2007 16:00

Skybird, I changed the jumpers as you said and it worked like a charm!!  I didn't have to physically move the drives or the connectors.  Both drives show up correctly in both the bios and Windows MCE - the DVD burner is now at DMA 4.  Thanks, Skybird for your excellent advice!  

Skybird

10.9K Posts

October 11th, 2007 17:00

Glad it worked.  For some reason, I have noticed that Pioneer drives want to be the Master by jumper.  I think, overall, it is best to have the writing drive as the Master by jumper or by Cable Select cable position.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Message Edited by Skybird on 10-11-2007 12:36 PM

turnkey86

19 Posts

October 13th, 2007 19:00

Hi Skybird, wonder if you can help me.  I have choppy, distorted audio when I play CD's or DVD's.  Was just fine before a few days ago.  For whatever reason, I can not go back before yesterday on the System Restore calendar.  Had the same problem in the past and was able to fix it by going back a week.  But, in one of the Primary IDE channels it has Current Transfer Mode as PIO.  I do have DMA if available selected in Transfer Mode, but PIO stays.  I even uninstalled it and rebooted, but it came back as PIO.  Is there anything else I can do?

turnkey86

19 Posts

October 13th, 2007 20:00

Skybird, you can ignore my previous question, but you still solved it for me.  I found your reference and link to the "quick fix" script and ran it.  All is now back to DMA and working well.  Thank you!

Skybird

10.9K Posts

October 13th, 2007 22:00

Nice to hear that.  Best regards.

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