Nec ND-4571A gone nuts!

[shav]

Hi folks,
I have a major issue with my Nec nd-4571A and have tried all options to fix it - with no luck.

Ok, some background info
My ND-4571A was working fine before the weekend. However, over the weekend I installed a new CPU cooler for my PC. This involved removing the motherboard to attach a bracket to the bottom. Hence I had to dismantle the entire PC and removed the DVD drive from the mobo. The drive is connected via IDE cable to another hard disk, then to mobo. Both drives are jumpered to channel select.

After I reconnected everything together again and booted up, the ND-4571A is seriously acting the maggot. I don't know what's up with it.
I recognizes audio CDs and I can see the CD has 15 tracks but if I go to play the CD, the drive starts whirring like mad and system freezes. I have to press eject on drive to unfreeze system. To me it seems, it can read table of contents of discs but can't actually play them.
If I put in data CDs, it starts whirring like crazy, system freeze and again, eject is only solution.
If I use PowerDVD, drive whirrs like crazy when trying to access drive, again -eject unfreezes system.

Now I must confess, that on re-connecting drive to system I initially had IDE cable upside and forced a pin backwards. I know, stupid of me. I opened it up and push the pin back out. Therefore, I thought the problem is hardware related and that I need a new drive. However, to test drive I used the Windows CD and booted from that. The drive was able to read it perfectly and brought me into Windows Setup mode. To me, this would indicate, no physical issue with drive but something on OS level.

I've tried everything else to pinpoint problem
Re-installed firmware
Uninstall/install windows driver
Boot to safe mode
Boot to safe mode (command prompt) - can't access drive root
Ran virus scans to check for viruses
Connect to mobo direct without other harddrive via the IDE cable


Is there anyone out there who can help me? Before I have to go buy another drive, I'd like to exhaust all options. Did anyome experience something like this before? Is there any tools I can use to check integrity of drive?

Any help greatly appreciated!!!! Cheers
Shav

 

[bacis]

hi.
since you were able to get to windows setup process
then your drive is fine,and i think is some issue with your os.
1 try disable autorunon this drive
2 use iso buster and see if you can read any disks.
www.isobuster.com

 

[shav]

Thanks Basic,
it's definitely not the drive. I installed it in another PC and it worked fine. I did some more work with OS last night and managed to get it to work!
In Device Manager, I unchecked "let bios determine transfer mode" and set it to PIO mode. Drive worked fine after this. This would lead me to believe there's something up with the BIOS setttings. I'm using a Gigabyte GA-8N-Sli Pro mobo flashed to bios version F7.
If you've ever use this BIOS, any suggestions on where the problem may be? Also, I picked PIO transfer mode but there was alot of other DMA options. Do you know which is best?
Cheers
Shav

 

[Zorg]

PIO is no good, you need to set it for DMA. Be sure DMA is enabled in the IDE controller properties in Device Manager. Also you might try and set one drive for master and the other one for slave. Did you change the ribbon cable? I changed the 40 pin to 80 pin and one of the drives wouldn't work. I don't know what caused that but I put the 40 pin back in and the drives were fine. See the links below for additional information.

PIO explained
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_input/output

DMA Explained
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesDMA-c.html

 

[bacis]

hi.
the dma mode is the standart operating mode of drives.
the pio mode is used when updating firmware on drive.
more info you can find here.for the pio i have read it once before many years during a firmware update to my drive,but these days i think there is no need to go to pio mode to do the update,or better the instraction are missing from firmwares updates.
http://www.onthegosoft.com/dma_setting_nt.htm

 

[TPLAT]

You probably had a bad cable. the 80 pin are better, as for PIO some drives will work in PIO mode but really slow, most common Ultra DMA setting for alot of cd/dvd burners is Ultra DMA mode 2 or also UDMA mode 2, I have a few dvd burners that operate in UDMA mode 4 and my hard drive operates in UDMA mode 5.

 

[shav]

Thanks guys,
I didn't get much time to mess around with it last night. The only thing I had time to do was change the trasnfer mode to DMA. WhenI did this, it wouldn't work. It only seems to work in PIO mode. Changing to DMA or allowing BIOS to control trasnfer mode causes the problem. I also tried re-installing the IDE drivers. No joy

Tonight, I'll look into getting another IDE cable and testing this. Cheers
Shav

 

[thelvyn]

Where are you changing to udma mode at ? In bios or in windows ?
Windows has a "feature" where it will drop the mode down on consecutive read errors.
If you go into device manager and select the channel the drive is installed on then select advanced is the channel set to use dma if available ?
If not set it to use dma.
Underneath that it will tell you what mode the drive is actually using.

There is a simple to test to determing if windows is screwing it up in this fashion.
Assuming your hdd are on primary(IDE0) and optical are on seconday(IDE1).
At the motherboard ide connectors swap the cables so the hdd are on secondary and the optical are on primary.
This will force windows to re-evaluate the optical drive and put it back in udma mode.

If this works you can just swap them back and the problem will be gone(For now at least). Lovely feature ehh ?

If the drive is in pio mode some symptons are crackling sound, system pauses as it tries to read the drive(Could be construed as a crash or freeze) and realllllly slow read/write times.

When this happens turning on caps lock or numlock will still work but otherwise your system is unresponsive. I went through this a while ago myself. Very frustrating.

 

[shav]

Cheers Thelvyn.
I'm setting the value in device manager. I didn't see a value for current transfer mode, only the option to set it. From looking at my laptop here in work, I can see that value. But at home things look different.
For example, in work laptop there's a Primary and Secondary IDE Channel under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller. At home, under IDE ATA/ATAPI, I have to go into parallel controoler and in here there's a primary and secondary tab.
At present, I have a HDD & DVD drive on same IDE cable. Both are channel select. BOIS shows DVD to be master and HDD to be secondary. Tonight, I'll hopefully get second IDE cable and split them out.
Cheers
Shane

 

[Zorg]

Shav,
The fact that you had the HDD and DVD on the same ribbon cable should have been mentioned. You always want to separate your bootable HDD and any CD/DVD players --- HDD - Primary, CD/DVD - Secondary. I was working with the understanding that you had two CD/DVD drives on the secondary. So yeh, absolutely get a second cable. Don't get me wrong they will work on the same cable but you can run into HDD slowdown issues. Also, if you have both set for cable select, it is clear that you also have them plugged in backwards DVD master HDD slave. The master is plugged into the end of the cable and the slave is plugged into the middle. Also just for grins make sure that you have the proper end plugged into the motherboard (all new cables have a blue end).

 

[shav]

Hey Zorg, I did mention that a HDD was on the cable. It's in my first post. Point of note is that the HDD is not bootable, it's a second drive for storage.
I'm also certain that the DVD is plugged into the end of the cable but let me check tonight. Cheers
Shav

 

[utaka95]

I tend to shy away from cable select myself, switching to master - slave jumpers has fixed at least 2 malfunctioning systems I've worked on. They were Dell/HP boxes but nonetheless it was a simple fix. In both cases a change was made (adding or removing a drive) And then things got flaky.

 

[TPLAT]

I wouldnt put a hard drive even if its a second one on the same IDE cable as an optical drive such as a dvd burner or cd burner.

 

[thelvyn]

Well a couple of things have been said so.
As far as having a hdd and ann optical on the same ribbon sometimes it is necessary. Should work fine just may cause some slowdowns, the slowdowns are because of the way the interface works nothing to be done. Now if possible dont do it but if you have to well what can you do ?

Cable Select : This used to be a problem on a lot of older mother boards but it should not be a problem nowadays. Any recent equipment should work fine with it. On the other hand it doesnt hurt to set them specifically to master and slave.

If you move the optical drive to another interface(IED0 to IDE1 for example or vice versa) windows should automatically re-detect it and set it correctly.

There are ways to do it in the registry also but I dont reccomend that normally if it can be avoided.
Moving it to another interface will do it and you can always move it right back(Just boot that way once at least first)

 

[TPLAT]

Your right when sometimes it cant be avoided, unfortunately my new build only had one IDE plug in on the mobo and I wanted to install 3 IDE burners and one SATA burner and the only way I could do that was to buy an IDE PCI controller card, giving me upto four more IDE conections for more dvd burners, now I only need a biiger case.

 

[Zorg]

Sorry, it's right there. It would even work if the HDD was bootable, you would just have some speed issues. The DVD is at the end of the cable and it is the master. Master/slave it doesn't matter. I was lookig for the pinouts to see which pin got dislodged, and if it was important, when I ran across this post about forcing XP to use DMA. Some of the problems, that were fixed, which appear in the comments at the bottom appear to be similar to what you indicated. check it out. Also see my earlier post about manually setting master/slave.

Sniptools | Tips/Tricks | Getting back to DMA mode in Windows XP

http://sniptools.com/tipstricks/getting-back-to-dma-mode-in-windows-xp

Post if you resolve this and what the fix was, I am curious.

 

[thelvyn]

That is about fixing the same thing I discussed. Simply moving the drive to another interface is sufficient to force windows to re-evaluate the drive however.

I try not to tell people to edit the registry if at all possible, if they do not know what they are doing and edit the wrong thing, delete something or put in an invalid value it can cause problems or even fail to boot.

If you MUST know the registry settings then fine but be warned I bear no responsibility if you mangle your system doing this. The simple clean and safe way to do this I have already described.

Determine which interface is the appropriate one, every system is different so thats up to you to decide.
Could be
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi\Scsi Port 0]

or

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\HARDWARE\DEVICEMAP\Scsi\Scsi Port 1]

for example.

These keys are called SCSI solely for historic reasons; SCSI Port 0 is actually IDE0 and SCSI Port 1 is IDE1.

make sure that DMAEnabled = 1 (DWORD value) create if necessary

Now to reset the checksum that ids your drive, windows will re-detect it on next boot if you do this.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]

Delete MasterIdDataCheckSum, SlaveIdDataCheckSum
Delete MasterDeviceDetectionTimeout, SlaveDeviceDetectionTimeout
Create ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess = 1 (DWORD value)

 

[shav]

Hi all,
I went at it again last night but still no joy. I used another IDE cable and connected the drive directly (no HDD attached) via the second IDE port to the mobo. I jumper the DVD drive to master. However I keep getting the same results. The drive can recognize CDs but if I go to play them, it just starts whirring mad with nothing happening. With data CDs/DVDs drive just whirs very fasy with again nothing happening

After doing the physical stuff above, I also tried
Flashing the BIOS again
Clearing the CMOS
Uninstalling the DVD drive
Uninstalling the Nvidia 4 Chipset ATA controller
Running sfc /scannow to check for corrupt windows files
Running full scan with Spydoctor
Re-flashing the firmware for the drive
No luck with any!!!!

Therefore from tha above, I can almost definitely rule out any hardware issues. All drivers seems to be ok as well. Perhaps there's something up with the regstry, I never got to try this.

2 strange things with all of this that are bugging me
1) Why drive works fine with PIO but not DMA? This could be due to registry errors which I will implement the fixes below tonight. Any thoughts?
2) Even more stranger. In "My Computer", the drive appears as a DVD-RAM. Not sure if this was the case before or just a DVD-RW. However, I can double-click on the icon and go into it as if it was an empty HDD. This is possible when there's no disk in the drive. As far as I'm aware, this shouldn't be possible but instead I should be prompted to insert a disc?

Thanks everyone for the posts
Shav

 

[shav]

Sorry, forgot to mention in last post. I also ran Nero InfoTool on drive last night if anyone wants to look at it.

Here's the main part of it. I s it correct that attached device on IDE is noted as CD-ROM???? If you need to see the rest, let me know

Nero InfoTool 4.03

Drive Information
------------------
Drive : _NEC DVD_RW ND-4571A
Type : DVD-RAM Recorder
Firmware Version : 1-02
Buffer Size : 2 MB
Date : ?
Serial Number : 6275697S111
Vendor Specific : 06071300
Drive Letter : E:\
Location : 0:2
Mechanism : Tray
Read Speed : 48 , 40 , 32 , 24 , 20 , 16 , 10 , 8 , 4 X
Write Speed : 48 , 40 , 32 , 24 , 16 , 8 X

Read CD Text : Yes
Return C2 Pointers : Yes
Read CD-R : Yes
Read CD-RW : Yes
Read DVD-ROM : Yes
Read DVD-RAM : Yes
Read DVD-R : Yes
Read DVD-RW : Yes
Read DVD-R DL : Yes
Read DVD+R : Yes
Read DVD+RW : Yes
Read DVD+R DL : Yes
Read BD-ROM : No
Read BD-R : No
Read BD-RE : No
Read HD DVD-ROM : No
Read HD DVD-R : No
Read HD DVD-RW : No
Read HD-BURN : No
Read Digital Audio : Yes
Read CD+G : Yes
Read VideoCD : Yes

Write CD-R : Yes
Write CD-RW : Yes
Write DVD-R : Yes
Write DVD-RW : Yes
Write DVD-R DL : Yes
Write DVD+R : Yes
Write DVD+RW : Yes
Write DVD+R DL : Yes
Write DVD-RAM : Yes
Write BD-R : No
Write BD-RE : No
Write HD DVD-R : No
Write HD DVD-RW : No
Write HD-BURN-R : No
Write HD-BURN-RW : No
Buffer Underrun Protection : Yes
Mount Rainier : No
SolidBurn : No
Labelflash : Yes
Modes : Packet, TAO, DAO, SAO, RAW SAO, RAW SAO 96, RAW DAO 96

Region Protection Control : RPC II
Region : 2
Changes User : 4
Changes Vendor : 4

Disc Information (E:\)
-------------------
Type : no disc inserted


Interface Information
---------------------
Adapter 1
---------
Description : NVIDIA nForce4 Intel® Edition Serial ATA Controller

Driver
Description : System32\DRIVERS\nvatabus.sys
Company : NVIDIA Corporation
Version : 5.10.2600.0521 built by: WinDDK
Description : NVIDIA® nForce(TM) IDE Performance Driver

Attached Devices
Description : ID 2 (0): _NEC DVD_RW ND-4571A
Type : CD-Rom Drive
Autorun : On

Adapter 2
---------
Description : NVIDIA nForce4 Intel® Edition Serial ATA Controller

Driver
Description : System32\DRIVERS\nvatabus.sys
Company : NVIDIA Corporation
Version : 5.10.2600.0521 built by: WinDDK
Description : NVIDIA® nForce(TM) IDE Performance Driver

Attached Devices
Description : ID 0 (0): WDC WD2500KS-00MJB0
Type : Disk Drive

Adapter 3
---------
Description : NVIDIA nForce4 Intel® Edition Serial ATA Controller

Driver
Description : System32\DRIVERS\nvatabus.sys
Company : NVIDIA Corporation
Version : 5.10.2600.0521 built by: WinDDK
Description : NVIDIA® nForce(TM) IDE Performance Driver

Attached Devices

 

[shav]

Hi all,
sorry I haven't posted a while with the progress of this but I've been away. Anyway, at the end of the day I decided to format the OS partition and re-install XP SP2 so to have fresh install. Still no joy. I've also tried another DVD drive, Hitachi GD 5000 (that works fine in DMA) with another PC but this has same problem, can't do DMA.
Therefore, this would lead me to believe the problem lies with BOIS/mobo. I've logged a call with Gigabyte. Once I have final response, will let ya know how I got on. Cheers
Shav

 

[TPLAT]

About a month os so ago I decided to build a new pc and the new Gigabite mobo I bought was using SCSI drivers and I tryed with help from their tech support to get it to use IDE drivers with no luck at all, I did everything the tech support guy said to do and nothing worked he finaly said that it is most likely a driver controller chip problem or something like that, replaced the mobo and the problem was fixed.