I'm pulling out my hair... please help me before I'm blad!

[deadly sk1llz]

Ok, this is a long story, and many twists and turns, so please bare with me.

My computer is in my sig.

Now, my new 16x DVD writer by I/O Magic was installed in place of my old 52x Samsung CD-RW/DVD combo drive. I set the jumper to slave on the second IDE channel. When I turned on my computer, it got all the way to the first WindowsXP splash screen, then it froze. It doesn't go any farther then that.

I've tried everything under the sun with this drive to make it work. I've switched IDE channels. (Only have two) I've tried slave or master. None of them seem to work. I've tried to plug in my 52x CD-RW again, and it does indeed boot up. (which is what's in right now.)

Do you have any idea at all why this could be happening, or any sort of solution?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Re: I'm pulling out my hair... please help me before I'm bla

I set the jumper to slave on the second IDE channel.

Do you mean you set the jumper on the drive to slave or you set it up in the bios that way?

I got an NF7-S r2 and I just leave the puppy on auto-select and set my DVD to "cable select" with the jumpers and it all worked peachy.

 

[deadly sk1llz]

I mean I set all the jumpers on all the drives to their respective settings.

I've tried it once by having only the secondary IDE channel set to 'cable select'. Do I have to have all drives set to 'cable select' for it to work? Any idea why it freezes upon bootup?

 

[Tim Murray]

what kind of weirdass IDE configuration do you have....?!

cable select on all of them is probably the way to go.

 

[MasterBaiter]

Have you tried switching it's location on the IDE cable as well? Next thing to try is get an update to the units firmware. Most likely the I/O model is made for them by someone else. I'd monkey with its location on the cable first. You should also just try it by itself on a single channel as master (not sure if you tried that yet, but I'd assume you have...). Good luck!

P.S. sometimes drives are just evil and won't work with a particular system. You could always look for a mobo bios update as well, but I'd say that's less likely to help you with your problem. :?

 

[_xxx_]

Just curious, do you have one drive as master and one as slave on each channel? Also, is your windows drive set to master?

The best BIOS setting is all auto, each channel should have one master and one slave and you should be ready to go.

Also, check out the UDMA settings in your BIOS, some CD/DVD drives don't like it when it's enabled.


CS is bad! Never do that.

EDIT:

I also had some CD/DVD drives that didn't work fine with the UDMA cable, but did work fine with the older PIO cable, that would be the last resort though, since it disables UDMA for that channel.

 

[Martin Eddy]

I've had this same problem with a sony dvd burner on a customers computer. The only way to get it to work was to use cable select on both the cd/dvd drives in his system.

 

[deadly sk1llz]

I've never messed with my UDMA settings. I have rounded cables by Vantec I believe. Could they be funking up my DVD drive? Maybe I should try the ribbon that came with the drive?

I've tried mostly everything else. (switching the IDE's, position on the cable), and bios recognizes it as 'GEIL GP16AS' or something like that, so it knows it. I think this has to do with something when Windows is detecting the drive, and it get's fouled up by something.

Possibly a restart could fix this?

Maybe set everything in my machine to cable select and hope for the best?

 

[mjtdevries]

If you use CS, then always do it on all devices.

CS basically means, that you don't use Master/Slave, but that you let the mobo decide which is which.

The mobo needs to support it. I'm not sure if normal mobo's always support it, since it is so rarely used. But Compaqs will often require CS.

Does the new DVD drive work at all?
Do you see it spinning up when you boot the system? (untill XP crashes) Do you see the leds burning?

It seems you know how to set master slave on the hardware. What happens when you then enter the BIOS? does it properly list the new DVD writer there?

If yes, then I wonder if it is just windows messing things up and not your hardware.

In that case I would try to remove the old drive from the device manager in windows. Then shutdown the system, and physically remove the drive.
Then I would boot without the new drive, to see if windows still works. (At least then it knows that something has changed. Maybe so far it has tried to talk to the DVD writer as if were still the old CD writer)

Then if windows boots properly shut it down again, and install the new DVD writer and start the computer again. And then pray

If the bios does not list the DVD writer, then you'll have to try different locations on the cables and different Master slave settings.
Using the drive as master should give less compatibility problems then using it as slave. (Although then the other device might fail )

How many devices do you have in total anyway? Just one harddisk and one writer, or also other devices?

 

[deadly sk1llz]

Bios lists the drive, and I can see it.

I haven't tried what you told me, but another forums suggested it, so I may try it later on.

I have 4 total devices.
1 optical (DVD writer)
3 Hard drives (Listed in sig)

 

[digitalwanderer]

Set 'em all to cable select, the NF7-S2 supports it well.

The only reason I ever set a device to anything BUT cs is if it's older hardware, some older CD/HDs need you to set it.

But try all of them to cs and see if that works.

 

[mjtdevries]

If the bios lists the drive properly, it shouldn't really be a problem with CS or master/slave anymore.

I think your best bet is that MS tries to communicatie with the new drive, via the old drivers.
With another CD drive that might not have mattered, but a DVD writer is quite different.

 

[pcchen]

One thing to note with cable select: you need a supported cable for it. Basically all UDMA-66 cable supports cable select.
The device on the end of the cable should be primary (even if you don't use cable select you should set it this way). The device in the middle of the cable is secondary.

 

[Guden Oden]

The mobo needs to support it.

No it doesn't. The cable has to though; one of the 40 pins needs to be cut for the second connector, that makes it the master drive when CS is used.