All my CD drives hate me

[Grahamdubya]

OK, so they do. I've been having problems with my CD-ROM and my CD-RW.
First, the CD-ROM is a Samsung SC148F. It is constantly on the fritz. When I restart the computer, I see the drive sitting there. However, after a few minutes of use, whatever it was doing will crash, and the CD drive no longer appears in My Computer. I used to be able to fix it by going to the add hardware wizard, checking for hardware already connected, and it would read it. Now, even that trick doesn't work. THe drive is useless.
Now, for the CD-RW. It is a Sony CRX160E. Basically, it doesn't read CDs. It only burns them. Whenever I try to install games (actual games I purchased, they install fine on other computers), or open music CDs, it doesn't register a disk, and when I browse the drive, it comes up blank. It won't even read burned CDs, either. It burns just fine, but can't even read the cds that were burned.
What's the deal? Can anyone help me read CDs on either drive? Thanks.

[sdkfz]

I was just helping out someone in Meford with a similar type of problem and was searching for more answers than I gave. I will repeat what I told him for your benefit.

1) try reseating the cables.
2) make sure that you have the drives jumpered master/slave and not master/master or slave/slave
3) try changing the pwer supply connector, maybe th eone in the drive is bad
4) try a new ribbon cable

good luck

[Kubie]

If I remember correctly, the Sony cd-rws like to be Master on the eide channel.

Carl

[mike breck]

What Windows version are you running?

[Grahamdubya]

I'm running Windows XP on an older Dell Dimension 4100.

[andyms18a]

with your dell dimension computer when you instaled windows xp did you go to the dell website and download your mother board chip set drivers for xp or is it just yousing it own built in drivers ? as your problam may be the ide bus and chipset drivers not working corectley try to download the latest from dell

[mike breck]

How many HDs do you have?

How do you have the drives jumpered - are they both on the same IDE channel or different ones?

What type of cable are all the devices on - 40 wire or 80 wire?

In Device Manager, go to the Properties boxes for both drives and uncheck "Enable CD digital audio" if it is checked. That seems to cause peculiar problems on a few systems.

Also check in Device Manager and tell us what the DMA status is for all your drives.

Open Device Manager.
Double-click IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers to display the list of controllers and channels.
Right-click the icon for the channel to which the device is connected, select Properties, and then click the Advanced Settings tab.