Both DVD drives not appearing/working

Hello,

I've already tried a few ideas that I've read about on this and other forums but am still stuck... so hopeful that one of you techies out there might be able to help me out…

Background
Back some months ago, I replaced a seemingly faulty WD HDD in my girlfriend's PC. Blue screen of death, blah, blah. The replacement HDD was SATA, the original IDE. Set up the (larger) disk through Disk Management and the PC’s been working fine since.

Two OEM IDE DVD drives are on the PC: a DVD RW in the top bay, a DVD ROM in the next bay down. Both have 4-pin molex power connectors and are on the same IDE ribbon cable back to the motherboard.

At some point, and I don't know exactly when, the two DVD drives have stopped working... trouble is, it's so many months ago that I replaced the HDD, I don't recall whether I tested the DVD drives after the replacement - or if they have stopped working after the HDD was replaced. The girlfriend (main user) can't remember whether she has used the drives since I setup the new HDD.

The (upper) DVD RW drive is getting power and its busy light does come on when the power is switched on to the PC; its eject button works ok; and when you insert a CD/DVD, it does an initial spin, but it is not accessible from within Windows (XP Home Edition SP3).

The (lower) DVD ROM drive does NOT appear to be getting power... regardless of which molex connector is used... I've tried molex connector P4 and P3 in the DVD RW drive and both allow the button to eject the disc; both allow the busy light to function. If I try either connector on the DVD ROM drive, no activity at all. The busy light does not light up at all; the button will not open the DVD tray.

Device Manager
Nothing showing in Device Manager for either drive. There’s no heading showing for DVD/CD-ROM Drives. If I expand the tree, there are no obvious issues. Under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers, Primary IDE Channel is (curiously) listed twice but reporting no errors on either entry.

Hardware fault?
First thoughts were maybe the DVD ROM drive is knackered. So before getting a new one, I first tried an alternative CD ROM from a separate desktop. No joy. So I next tried connecting the DVD ROM to a “Easy IDE” (IDE-USB) connector, attached to my laptop – drive works fine. Light comes on, button causes the disc to eject etc... nothing wrong with it.

Pins & Jumpers
As I had replaced the original HDD with a new one (which has no jumper set but it is SATA so assuming that is ok), I've looked at the jumpers on the DVD drives... The DVD RW drive was set to Master. DVD ROM was set to slave. These both seemed to be logically correct and were (AFAIK) as per OEM setup and seemingly in line with what I’ve read on the forums/tech pages. However, in a bid to see if it would make any difference, I've tried setting both DVD drives to Cable Select. Rebooted. No difference. Reset to master & slave as per original settings.

Disk Management
If I go into My Computer / Manage / Disk Management, neither DVD drive appears there (nor thus in Windows Explorer). Additionally, if, as some postings suggest, I set the upper view in Disk Management to "Graphical View" - again I can't see either drive. The one interesting point is that if my memory serves me correctly, installing the new HDD may have ‘created’ more logical drives than were previously there.. so it’s technically possible that I may have inadvertently re-used one of the DVD drive letters for a new partition on the new HDD… but when I look in Disk Management and try to add a new drive – the DVD isn’t there to select from. I also tried changing the E: drive letter to X: and rebooting – again nothing came up.. since restored to E:

Registry settings
In line with other suggestions, I've tried going into the registry:
HKLM / SYSTEM / Current Control Set / Control / Class / {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
and removing both the values for LowerFilters and UpperFilters and those specific keys. Reboot. No change in either instance. Registry restored.

IDE Cable
I’ve tried inverting the IDE connector going into both DVD drives in case I had reinserted this incorrectly when I had the components out to switch the HDD. I’ve effectively tried them both ways around in the drive and it only seems to fit one way into the motherboard. No joy…


Could it be a faulty IDE cable??

Any other bright ideas I can try?

Any queries welcome. Please let me know if I've missed any obvious details. And if you've managed to read down to here, thanks for your patience!

Please note that I will only have intermittent access to the PC and the internet from Wed 19th so I may not be able to respond to any suggestions after that date with immediate effect.

Regards,

Owain

 

try using one drive at a time. Your power supply my be faulty, and therefore not supplying enough power to the devices.

 

Are the 2 dvd drives on the same IDE ribbon? If so, are they configured properly as master and slave?

 

Hi both,

Thanks for the initial suggestions.

abekl: Yes the two DVD drives are both on the same IDE ribbon. The connector at the opposite end to the motherboard is connected into the master, whilst the 'middle' connector is connected to the slave. This seems to be in line with what I've read on jumper settings for IDE devices - but I've also tried putting the end connector into the slave and the middle connector into the master - didn't make any difference.

JonBoyFishhead: if I just use one of the two DVD drives to test if the PSU is faulty, how would I connect the 'live' one up to the ribbon - do I connect it to the end connector and set the jumper to MASTER (and leave the middle connector empty)?

Note that I already know they both work independently power-wise; the button on the DVD RW drive (currently set as MASTER) allows you to eject the disc tray; the DVD ROM drive (set as SLAVE) spins fine when connected to a separate PC via the USB/IDE connector. But we can't see or hence use either drive.

Thanks,

Owain

 

Greetings, medrus.

Yes.

For clarification: if you replaced the HDD, did you not have to use one of the optical drives to load Windows? I would assume so, which might help answer the question of when the optical(s) stopped working.

If, however, you used some backup/cloning routine to image the old drive to the new, please elaborate.

Have you looked in BIOS to see if the drives are present?