Just fried 2 different CD-R drives, need advice

[Guest]

My setup: All my PC's are homebuilt. My main system is an Abit BX6 board,
appox 4 years old, P3 600, 40 GB primary drive, 4 GB secondary, 36x CD-R
drive. Windows 98SE. I have an old P100 as well that is fully functional and used for troubleshooting the following...

Problem: CD-R drive shows up in device manager as drive E:. CD's don't play.
Exploring the E: drive yields "Device not ready" or "No CD in drive".

What I've checked so far: Checked Autoplay, used Lenscleaning CD to clean
drive. Checked Device Manager for conflicts, or problems with driver.
Rebooted and checked that drive is in Setup. All OK so far. Tried using Boot floppy with CD-R drivers, no luck, it saw the drive but gave me ARF when I tried to use it. Tried moving drive from Master Slave to Secondary Slave (to check cable problem) no good.
Swapped CD-R drive with one from my old PC.

Now the fun starts.

My broken CD-R drive (36X) is also broken in my second PC. The second CD-R drive (4X) doesn't work in either PC anymore either. Both drives now yield the same errors in both PC's.

My computer is obviously frying any CD-R drive I put in. The drives' LED still lights if I put a CD in them, but they don't sound like they're spinning. Windows hangs a bit when I put in a CD like it's trying REALLY hard to find some data (Good old Windows) but can't find anything there. It "knows" there's something there though...

They still show up in Setup and Device Manager, I still get E: drive in Explorer, but they won't transfer any data
whatsoever.

The problem "has" to be with my MoBo, which is ruining any drive I install.

Does anyone recognize this problem, do I have to replace the MoBo? (This is a pain because I'm fine with my processor, but I'll have a heck of a time
finding a Slot 1 MoBo these days.)

Any advice appreciated.

Steve

 

[Guest]

Solution 1: Try swapping your secondary HDD with CD-ROM.
Solution 2: Is your power source voltage a little too high? Measure the voltage input from your case power source.

I wish my brain was an Athlon XP

 

[Guest]

1)I've swapped both drives now in and out of every position on both pc's. Unfortuately the drives are broken, so I can't use them anymore for troubleshooting. I'm going to pick up something cheap for the p-100, but I'm reluctant to put anything worthwhile into the p3 untill I know it won't burn out like the others.

2)My "core voltage" as displayed in BIOS is 2.05v, which is CPU default. That's about as much as I can tell you.

 

[Guest]

Well, I stopped by a computer show in town and picked up a cruddy cd-r drive for $5.99! Used it to troubleshoot again and narrowed down the problem to my primary slave position. Drives are fine in secondary, so I got a decent one and am now fine for cd's.

Now it's just a guess, is it my cable, or my 40 gig hd that's frying anything plugged into the slave? I'll figure it out somepoint....

 

[AsusA7V]

Asus A7V AMD 800 (OC 904) 384 SDRAM W98 SE

Steve_N...same problem here. My AGI 56X CD Rom quit responding after I erroneously installed AMD AGP miniport driver ver. 4.80 (Per Tom's Hardware Guide Tip) Went thru the same troubleshooting procedure you did with same results. The CD Rom is recognized in Bios and in Windows, a drive letter is assigned but the CD Rom cannot read contents. My Zip CDR burner was unaffected eventho on the same ribbon as the 56X. 56X is master, Zip as slave. Switched them around and no difference.
Can anyone suggest a reason for this problem and, hopefully, a solution? Many Thanks