Topic: DVD Burner

[TR]

Never mind Chaps and Chappess.......I have tried everything and still no go even tho it shows in Bios but not anywhere else  >.
Will have to record cds @16x on dvd rw, still it looks good having all the trays full up  

Many thanks for all the replys, if you are ever in this neck of the woods give us call and I will buy you a drink..Promise  

Hookstar (Terry)

[Simon]

Surely you're not giving up, Hook?    I had this problem with a CD drive not so long ago.  I would have sworn I had everything right.  The jumpers, the leads, everything.  In the end I took it all to bits and started again.  I still don't know what was wrong, but it then worked.

Have you double checked the jumper positions, and made certain that the middle connector on the IDE lead goes to the slave device, and all that?

Something else which might be worth a try is to 'uninstall' all the CD/DVD drives in Device Manager, then let Windows find them again.  I think you said they are all present on your boot screen, so maybe it has simply failed to install the CDRW, and has got confused with the drive letters?  This is only a blind guess, but I don't think it can do any harm.

[Sandra]

Just a thought, thanks Simon as you made me think of it  
Some hard drives have one jumper setting when used as a single master on a cable and a different one when set as a master with a slave, it could be that.
You will have to pull the drive out and check what it says Hooky, or look on the drive manufacturers site.
Dont just assume its same setting as it was on as a single master  

[Simon]

Sandra, one of the jumper settings is Cable Select, yes?  What would happen if you set each drive to Cable Select?  I've often thought of trying it, but it seems too easy.

[Sandra]

Its a bit obsolete now I think Simon.
Either Compaq or HP used to have theirs on that I believe but most manufacturers just stick to the normal master and slave settings now.
I think the new WD drive that I recently fitted in this PC had a jumper in place for use as a single master and had to be removed when I fitted a slave, or it was the other way round.
I even have a 60 gig that has a different set up to the usual single jumper, in some configurations it has 2 in and one is at right angles to the normal postion  

[Tony]

"Cable select"

Means exactly what it say's on the tin. The jumpers don't determine which is Master and which is Slave, the cable does, dependent on the order you attach them to the drive.

I use cable select, as I have my setup copied on to a backup drive. So if C:drive fails, I can whip the side off the PC, swop the cable around, and the back up drive becomes C:Drive.

[TR]

Ermm exscuse me?   ........can I just butt in for a second   reading between the lines here the 1st thing I need to try is a new IDE cable just to make sure its not that.

Next thing as I looked in the case earlier and just realised that the CD/RW is on the front end of the cable and the HD is in the middle, should it be the other way round ??

Heck its gone past midnight ........night all till this morning  

[Simon]

The front end of the cable is the Master, and the middle is the Slave.  The HD should be set as Master, and connected to the front end of the cable, and the CDRW set to Slave and connected to the middle.  That's how it is on mine, anyhow.  Due to the position of my drives, I had to twist the cable in a sort of figure of eight, to get the middle to the DVDRW and the 'front' to the HD.


Edit: This post is complete muppetry.  I didn't get where I am today without mastering the art of incompetance!      (See below)

[Dack]

The position on the cable only matters when Cable Select is used.

[Simon]

Bugger!   Just when I thought I'd got something right!    So I can untwist mine and it will still work, Dack?

[Dack]

Yep

[Simon]

I'll get me coat...  

[Tony]

Well I never knew that, Dack, re: slave, primary and cable connection.

Simon you brighten the most boring threads, I do miss ya when Pipex is down  

[TR]

here is my bios screen, had to take a picture with my "New" camera  

[Tony]

Have you tried swopping one of the DVD drives with the Liteon CD-RW, so both DVD drives aint on the same cable. It's called the 1000 monkeys approach. They tried it to see if the monkeys could replicate the works of Shakespear, but they only managed to come up with some stuff by a bloke called Bacon.