I'm working on my Mom's Dell Dimension 8400 that is no longer under
warranty. It came with two optical drives -- DVD and CD-RW -- and
lately the CD-RW has stopped detecting CDs and so I bought another
drive to replace it. I've assembled several computers in my time, so I
didn't expect any trouble.
The two drives that came from Dell were both Philips with jumpers set
to cable select. I took out the offending CD-RW and slid in the new
brand-X drive ("I/O Magic") -- which is a DVD-RW because nobody sells
CD-RW drives in brick and mortar stores anymore. (My mom doesn't need
a DVD-RW, but c'est la vie.)
So I connected the IDE and power, plugged everything back in, and
booted up. Then I got two little system beeps and the following not-
too-uncommon error:
--
Drive 4 not found: Parallel ATA, PATA-0 (PRI IDE Master)
Drive 5 not found: Parallel ATA, PATA-0 (PRI IDE Slave)
Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
--
F1 just booted into XP with no sign of optical drives, and F2 took me
into the BIOS where both drives did seem to be listed and on although
both had DriverIDs of "unknown."
Thus began a whole series of attempts to make it work which all proved
unfruitful. I tried every combination of master/slave as well as
switching which drive was in which bay and then trying every
combination of master/slave again. The results were the same every
time. I scoured the internet to no avail, but I did read that some
drives are just finicky and won't work with others, so I said, "That's
what I get for buying the cheapest brand-X drive..." and went back to
the store and bought a nice Pioneer DVD-RW. I was full of optimism.
So I came back home, traded the drives, and the same thing happened!
I've tried cable select as well as setting one to master and one to
slave, but it doesn't work. I haven't tried every combination yet with
this drive, but I'm wondering if something else could be going on
here. It seemed awfully suspicious that I could be getting the very
same behavior with this second drive, and I've taken great care to
make sure that the IDE and power cable are definitely pushed in
sufficiently.
Does anybody have anything else for me to try? I know that in the
worse case I can have my mom switch to an external RW drive, but that
will be logistically inconvenient and I'd really like to get an
internal one working if I can. Besides, not being able to make this
work is making me look like an idiot. =)
Thanks!
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Computer Tech Support" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/computer-tech-support?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
