Trouble with DVD-ROM

[luisr]

A few days ago I started having an odd problem with my DVD-ROM drive (Liteon LTD163D). First, it stopped recognizing disks - everything was supposedly an audio CD with just one track, which appears as "track00.cda" when I "Explore" the disk.

This drive is in the secondary IDE channel of my system as master, and a CD-RW drive as the slave in the same channel. There are two hard drives in the primeary channel.

This system has a MSI P4 motherboard (sorry, don't have the model at hand) and is running Windows XP Home SP2. I believe the problem started when I installed the latest update of Nero Burning ROM after I installed SP2. The drive had worked previously in the same setup and also with another motherboard I just replaced with the current one. Tried uninstalling Nero and reinstalling and even reinstalling Windows with SP2 (interestingly off the very same DVD-ROM drive which does work properly outside the normal Windows environment) with no results.

I also tried removing the secondary IDE from Windows device manager and restarting to force a reinstall of the driver and no results either.

Finally, tried switching over the two CD drives - putting the CD-RW as master and the DVD-ROM as slave and now whenever I try to read a disk (any type) in the DVD-ROM the system reboots.

The CD-RW drive is working properly as master or slave, no difference there.

Suggestions?

[Cricket]

Try the DVD-ROM by itself on the secondary IDE channel (unplug the CD-RW). Does it work?

If the problem persists, try the DVD-ROM in another computer to see if it works there.

Cricket

[luisr]

Originally Posted by Cricket Try the DVD-ROM by itself on the secondary IDE channel (unplug the CD-RW). Does it work? If the problem persists, try the DVD-ROM in another computer to see if it works there. Cricket

Tried running the DVD-ROM alone in the secondary channel and still get the track00.cda thing. Still have to try in another computer. At least it no longer restarts when I put it back as master.

[luisr]

Well, the problem seems to be gone now. Just for the sake of trying, I replaced the flat ribbon cable with one that came with the motherboard. The old cable is a regular 40 conductor cable and the new one is 80 conductor and round, meant to be used for the Ultra-ATA hard drives. I was not using it because due to the little space available that cable could not be used but I had an existing 80 conductor flat cable from my old motherboard.

Both CD drives now appear to be working properly. In fact, I am playing an audio CD in the DVD drive right now and played a DVD not long ago.

Hope this was the fix.

[luisr]

A follow-up just for the sake of completeness. A few days later I found that a new 40 conductor ribbon cable was included with my motherboard and I was not using it just because I originally chose to retain all cables I was using in the previous motherboard. Took out the 80 conductor cable from the CD drives and put the 40 conductor ribbon cable. Everything is working fine so far. The old cable was definitely the cause.