Problem with Cd burner...need HELP!!!

[theholyavenger]

Originally posted by andrewas: Sure, go ahead and email me. Ill wait till morning and sobriety (+hangover ) before thinking to much more though. If you can get to a win98 machine, you can create a boot disk on it with format a: /s copy c:\windows\command\ebd\*.* a:\ If you boot with that disk, you wont be able to see your harddrive unless you made it fat32, but if your CD-R has any life left in it, you should be able to read a CD. If you cant, then Im afraid its dead, probably permanently and even if it is reperable, probly cost more to fix than replace. Maybe a dead laser assembly or something would be a simple fix, but I would just go for a new one.

*sob* I think that is the case...I have just formatted my computer and installed win XP again and the CD-RW is still not working...

Just before i hop out and buy myself a new CD burner...how can i make absolutely sure that it's 100% dead, the kind which the body doesn't even move when you poke it with a stick...

Even though i really wanted that Plexwriter 48X disc burner, i'm still skeptical about spending all my savings($150) on a new cd burner just before finding out that my old one is still working...

[The Hunter of Jahanna]

do you have the master and slave jumpers set right?

[andrewas]

Best way to see if the drive is really dead is find what settings your DVD is on (There will be a set of jumpers on the back, you need to make sure the CD-R is set to match the DVD) and then plug the ribbon cable from the DVD into the CD-R. If BIOS detects it, you got it right.

Great thing about ATAPI drives (dont worry, its what you have) is that windows dosent need to know anything about the drive to read from it, so if you do the switch and you still cant read from the drive, you know the problems in the drive. If you can suddenly read from the drive, either you had a loose connection (probably on the motherboard end of the cable) so put it all back and double check everything. If it only fails in its original configuration, the problems either in the cable (unlikely) or the IDE controller on your mobo(expensive)

But from what your saying Im fairly confident its the drive itself is dead.

[theholyavenger]

Okay...i've double checked the jumper setting on the back of both devices.

Since the CD-R/RW is the master, the jumper setting should be the first on the right...as for the dvd rom(slave), i see no jumper setting on it(the jumper's gone!). But if that's the problem, wouldn't it affect the dvd rom instead of the cd burner? Where in contrast, my cd burner is the one not functioning right now...

BTW, i remembered yesterday when i tried to play a dvd on my drive, it experienced quite an intensive rattle while spinning the disc...would that loosen the jumper setting? And i recall it's sometime yesterday that my CD-RW stopped working...

[theholyavenger]

Originally posted by andrewas: Best way to see if the drive is really dead is find what settings your DVD is on (There will be a set of jumpers on the back, you need to make sure the CD-R is set to match the DVD) and then plug the ribbon cable from the DVD into the CD-R. If BIOS detects it, you got it right. Great thing about ATAPI drives (dont worry, its what you have) is that windows dosent need to know anything about the drive to read from it, so if you do the switch and you still cant read from the drive, you know the problems in the drive. If you can suddenly read from the drive, either you had a loose connection (probably on the motherboard end of the cable) so put it all back and double check everything. If it only fails in its original configuration, the problems either in the cable (unlikely) or the IDE controller on your mobo(expensive) But from what your saying Im fairly confident its the drive itself is dead.

So andrewas, what you're saying is that i should switch the cd-rw with the dvd-rom (master with slave) by altering the jumper setting, right? And then plug everything in the back of the dvd-rom to the cd-rw and vice versa?

Currently there's an IDE cable connecting the cd-rw and the dvd-rom, then another IDE cable from the back of the dvd-rom runs through to the motherboard, the audio cable connects the audio card with the dvd rom. For the jumper setting, the cd-rw has a jumper on the right connector (master), as for the dvd-rom, it does not even have a jumper at all.