Need help with optical drives

mikeyg83

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Jul 11, 2006
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Hey, I just realized that my optical drives are no longer functioning. They have power so they can open and close, and they are correctly connected in Master/Slave Fashion via IDE. They have been in my system since I built it ~1.5 years ago. The master drive is a NEC DVD-RW ND-3520AW. The slave drive is a Lite-On DVD-ROM SOHD-16P9S. They both show up in the device manager under DVD/CD-ROM drives but the symbol next to each of their names has a yellow exclamation point. Within each of the properties for the devices, under "Device Status" it says "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)" I have tried the troubleshooting helpter, but it is worthless. It recommends I uninstall and reinstall the device, which does not solve the problem, it continues exactly the same. I have opened up the case and ensured that the connections for the power and the IDE cables are secure, which they are. The only thing worth noting is that my computer just traveled on a 5 hour car ride (meaning it has undergone some movement recently), but I feel like it would be too easy of an answer to say that something inside got jostled or busted on the motherboard to cause this problem. The BIOS recognizes both drives as well, just like always. Any help on the matter would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Mike

PS- The rest of my system specs are:
P4 540J
Abit AG8 3rd-Eye
2x 160GB WD harddrives
floppy drive
XFX nvidia 6600GT
 

_Morphine_

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May 22, 2006
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I know you said you unistalled/reinstalled them but have you tried uninstalling the driver and downloading the newest ones?

It recommends I uninstall and reinstall the device, which does not solve the problem, it continues exactly the same.
If its installing the same bunk driver that would make sense.

Other than that I recommend running some HDD diagnostics.
 

maury73

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You should know that there is no driver at all for IDE devices: Windows has native IDE support, no additional driver's needed (and don't use third party driver for any reason!).

Try this:
1. disconnect the two devices (power and IDE cables) and boot Windows
2. shutdown and install only one device as master
3. boot windows and see if it works
4. shutdown, remove the device and install only the other, as master
5. boot windows and see if it works

Remember that if the master device is faulty, also the slave will have problems, especially in DMA transfers so it's important to try if there's a problem with your master drive or something else.
 

_Morphine_

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May 22, 2006
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You should know that there is no driver at all for IDE devices: Windows has native IDE support, no additional driver's needed
8O

Oh really? So if your native non-driver gets corrupted the hardware magically speaks to the software...neato.

But that reminds me, you may want to update the chipset's IDE DRIVERS.
 
You may want to try a new IDE cable. I've had both HDD and DVD drive mystery problems that were caused by bad cables. Sometimes the drives will get recognized alright, but they won't function correctly because of the bad connection.
 

maury73

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But that reminds me, you may want to update the chipset's IDE DRIVERS
They are not the same thing: now you are referring to the IDE controller drivers but in your previous post you referred to the optiocal devices driver that simpky don't exist.

Anyway even if the chipset IDE drivers have problems at most he would have problems in DMA, but no problem at all in recognizing the drive.
 

_Morphine_

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May 22, 2006
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I said "That reminds me" meaning that in addition to the OS drivers you may want to look at the chipset drivers.
optiocal devices driver that simpky don't exist.
Once again --> 8O <--
Even if you use the system provided driver its still a driver and can become corrupt. Infact its located at c:\windows\system32\drivers\*.sys

So stop saying they dont exsist, its obsurd.

and don't use third party driver for any reason
Many people use 3rd party drivers, yes at their own risk, but they do it. I use AnyDVD.sys with zero regret.
 

maury73

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Even if you use the system provided driver its still a driver and can become corrupt
Read well before answering: I didn't say there isn't a driver, I simply said that no third party driver exists for optical devices because it's native, shipped with the OS itself.
And you sould know that every OS shipped driver in the system32 path is constantly monitored and if it became corrupt it would be automatically recovered by the backup copy taken from the failsafe path (that is not writable by any process other than the kernel itself).

I use AnyDVD.sys with zero regret
I also use that driver, but it's not a CD-ROM driver, it's an ASPI layer driver, a simply modified Adaptec ASPI driver (I have the sources of both) with some bug-fixes and many improvements and has nothing to do with the OS CD-ROM driver.