Are Dell systems picky about how you upgrade CD/DVD devices?

Question

Hi everyone, I was wondering if Dell machines are prone to problems if you upgrade with third party devices.  I purchased a Dimension 4600 about 3 months ago - I added a CD-RW drive from my old machine to the 4600, giving me a total of 2 CD devices (the other being a Samsung DVD-ROM that came with the machine).  I made sure that both devices were set to the 'cable select' jumper setting.  They both appear in the BIOS and are both set to DMA. I've had intermittent problems with the devices since.  For example, if I boot the machine with a CD or DVD in the DVD-ROM, neither device will work when the comptuer boots up.  The event viewer says that the DVD-ROM has a bad block when this occurs.  Other problems include missing sound when I rip a CD, problems burning CDs, and so on. I took all of the advice that I could find on this forum and none of it helped (although all of the leads were appreciated).  I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP, which helped for a while, but eventually the problems returned.  I'm now wondering if this is happening because I put a non-Dell part in the machine. I was also wondering if it could be the result of strain on the PSU.  I now have two hard drives, two CD devices, 1 gig of RAM, and a Radeon 9800 Pro running on the stock 4600 power supply. I called Dell support and I hate to say that I was wholly unsatisfied with the experience.  They told me to not leave a disc in the machine when I turn it off, but I've worked with a lot of computers in the past and I've never had this problem before. Any ideas would be most appreciated.  I'm stumped.  Thanks for reading.

Ziwpiz · Answer

You can use any third part CD or DVD burner in your Dell. What software are you using for the CD-RW, is it compatable with XP?. Did you install the CD-RW in the top bay? This wouuld make it the master, The cable position determines wheather it's Master or Slave, (Both drives set to CS (Cable Select))

_________________________

Dimension 4500 - Pentium 4 - 2.0 GHz
WINDOWS XP (Home Edition) SP-2 (PLUS!)
512 MB DDR SDRAM
80 GB HD 7200
64 MB GEFORCE4 Video card with TV out
SoundBlaster Live 1024 Voices Sound Card
16X DVD-ROM (LITEON LTD 163)
KHypermedia DVD+RW 8X4X8 (Nero 6.0)
100 MB Internal Zip Drive
IEEE 1394 Firewire Card
JVC GR-D90 DV Camcorder
Sandisk 6 in 1 card reader
Sandisk Cruzer Mini (256 MB)
Belkin 2.0 USB Hub
HP Deskjet 970 Cxi
HP Photosmart 100

dan2577 · Answer

I forgot to mention this about when the drives are acting up: if you put a disc in one of the drives and open My Computer, the entire system hangs and ends up not responding. It really seems that there is some big communication problem that happens if the drives are not properly initialized during booting. (I'm no tech support person, so that probably doesn't even make sense.)

Thanks again.

dan2577 · Answer

Hi and thanks for your reply.

I'm using Nero 5.5.9.14 as my CD burning software. Not sure if there are compatibility issues with XP and this program, but I'd like to hear about it if you know.

I have the CD-RW installed in the bottom bay. I left the DVD-ROM at the end of the cable (i.e. as the 'master' and in the top bay); I only removed the DVD drive to make sure that it was set to cable select.

I can't remember if I tried unplugging the CD-RW and seeing if the problem is still present with only the DVD-ROM hooked up. Maybe I'll try that...

girl4hbk · Answer

I have been experiencing the same problems and have completely uninstalled all burning software.  That doesn't do any good, by the way.  I have also started the system several times to find that one of the drives wouldn't load at start-up.  Please let us know if you find an answer.

dan2577 · Answer

Hi girl4hbk,

Could you post your system specs so we can compare?

I'm running:

Dimension 4600
Windows XP SP1
P4 3.0Ghz w/800Mhz FSB
1GB PC3200 RAM
Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616E
Generic CD-RW 40x12x48
Maxtor 80GB Hard Drive
80GB Hard Drive that came with the Dell
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB video card
Stock power supply (250W I believe)

I think that about covers it. I hope we can get to the bottom of this.

If anyone else is having a similar problem, please let me know.

Thanks.

girl4hbk · Answer

Dimension 8100

Windows 2000 (Problem has existed through multiple service packs)

P4 2.4

128MB RDRAM

Stock DVD

ACER 8x4x32

Stock 40 GB Hard Drive

(Can't remember sound card upgrade)

Stock power supply

Sorry about the generic specs, but I'm working off of memory. My hard drive just died last night and I can't boot up.

Storage, Drives & Media

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