Dell 2400 really struggling reading CD: Memory problem?

Hi everyone,

As I stated in a previous thread, I only have 128 Mb DDR in my Dell P4 2.2 running XP Home (what can I say, it was about $550 w/ flat panel). As far as memory problems, the only thing really until last night has been problems running complex computation software like Corel's Painter 8, and multitasking is very slow indeed. Diablo II, which is a pretty standard fantasy hack-n-slash from the Win Me period, runs well while drawing data continuously from a CD-ROM.

The CD disk drive, which is read-only, has had no problems until I stuck in a CD-RW that had some shareware on it. The files ranged from about 10 to about 50 Mb. As I copied them, it was slow and the copy app did get temporarily gummed up several times, but the first four files copied and worked fine. Then the trouble started (this was about midnight, so a late night of frustration ensued ).

Basically it just started locking up when I tried to do just about anything involving this CD-RW. Sometimes even looking at the contents would cause a lock up. Initiating copy or move would cause a major freeze, even crashing the system once or twice. When it would actually start to slog through copying, it would eventually stop and give me "Data Error: redundant cycling check" (I think that's how it was worded). Trying to install from the disk would either give other errors or continue along at astronomically slow speed.

The disk itself is not totally corrupted because on my laptop, which runs XP Pro with the same memory and a P3 600, it extracted and installed all the files okay, but it did give me the same error message as the Dell when I tried to copy.

My questions are:

If this is strictly a RAM problem, why does it have no problem with any of the other CD's, including CD-ROM's with half-gig applications on them? Installing them is still smooth (though not particularly fast). No similar problems have ever happened either doing that or running app's from the HD.

Could just accessing and doing basic functions with a CD-RW containing average to small files use up that much memory that it locks up over and over, particularly with no other major app's running (just control panel window open, etc.)? That seems strange to me, but then I don't know much about it.

Here's hoping there's nothing wrong with my computer a little extra memory can't fix (512 is in the mail as I write).

Once again, thanks for all your help. Very much appreciated!

Dave

 

Wow, it really went down the commode this time. I left it trying to install a program from the CD-RW for a while while I was out of the house. It seemed to be limping along but was showing no errors when I left. When I got back it was frozen so bad I couldn't even reboot w/ ctrl-alt-del. I had to switch the power off (first time that's ever happened with this PC). How could a lil' ole CD-RW wreak this much havoc???

 

disc read errors are caused by a multitude of stuff.....maybe your cdrom is about to die....it might be your lens is dirty; your filmware needs an upgrade; or your cdrom cant read cdrw/cdrs

 

Doesn't sound like a memory problem, although your PC will be much happier in general when you get more RAM in there.

If the problem is just with that particular CDRW disc, then I agree it sounds like your drive has a probem with certain CDRWs. You might try burning one at a slower speed, that might help.

 

Thanks for the replies. I suspect it's just a cheap and very non-adaptive CDROM drive, and the problems may be compounded by the lack of memory. This was kind of a barebones 2400. I need a read/write drive w/ DVD anyway.

One thing it was consistently doing (mechanically speaking) was starting to spin when I'd push the disk in, then kind of just fizzling after a couple seconds, then sort of making a half-hearted attempt to read the disk every ten or twenty seconds for a while, without much success beyond just identifying the files. When I think about it, that sounds like a drive that isn't getting a lock on the disk so it just sort of mills around and goes nowhere.

The thing that seemed particularly strange to me, though, is how strongly it impacted the operating system based on whatever it was feeding it. It was just really causing major meltdowns. That's the part that puzzles me and had me pretty worried, but I guess if the system is getting a bunch of confusing/garbled instructions from the disk drive, it might explain why it just locked up and couldn't resolve it. Still no real serious problems with any other applications.

As I said, there were also a few problems loading from this disk with my laptop which doesn't have a CDRW, so maybe stuff like this is not uncommon with read-only drives.

Thanks again,
Dave