Troubleshooting problem

EdTechGuy

Distinguished
Nov 22, 2006
4
0
18,510
Please excuse me and redirect me if I'm posting this in the wrong place.

I had a bizarre problem surface today. Whenever I insert a disc in the optical drive, my system restarts as if there had been a brownout, I checked the PSU calculator and, according to it, I should have about 60 watts to spare with everything plugged in.

Is there any way other than swapping components to discern if this issue is a PSU issue or an optical drive issue?
 

g-paw

Splendid
Jan 31, 2006
4,479
0
22,780
I don't think so. You could see if the mfg has any newer firmware and also unistall the Optical drive and Windows will reinstall it at start up. How old is the Optical drive? You can a good NEC, Lite On, or LG DVD burner for $30
 
Do you have any errors in the event viewer that correspond to the CD being loaded?

You could also try booting off a linux CD like knoppix or puppy linux and try and recreate the problem there. Since the CD will be in use it will be a good test. You can even get the command line of prime95 running for stress testing the cpu / mem a bit and check the psu rails with a multimeter, check out this thread for details.
 

EdTechGuy

Distinguished
Nov 22, 2006
4
0
18,510
I had an old machine with a CD-ROM so I swapped the drives and didn't get the error on either machine. Does this suggest anything?
 
Funny I had a similiar problem this morning, I put an old optorite cdrw as the master on the secondary and had a hdd as slave, I got random lockups when using the drive. I removed the slave and ran it as master standalone, no problems. I swapped the primary slave drive to it and put my old slave back on the primary and the problem just went away.

Try experimenting with cable select/master/slave/standalone I am curious as to if it helps your problem with that drive.
 

g-paw

Splendid
Jan 31, 2006
4,479
0
22,780
I had an old machine with a CD-ROM so I swapped the drives and didn't get the error on either machine. Does this suggest anything?

If you put in a different optical drive and didn't have a problem, then likely the other one is bad. If under warranty, I'd RMA it otherwise I get a new one, again a DVD writer is $30