[very OT] Tech Help!

[DerianCypher]

Alrighty then,

I have a brand new shiney DVD RW/R drive that I bought this weekend and it is being so totally evil. I installed it into my computer, booted up, and wonderful windows xp said "Hey cool! We have a DVD burner now! Lemme install it for ya there buddy "

So, Windows installed it and whenever I try to access the drive through mycomputer I get an I/O error and it also sometimes only reads the drive as a CD-ROM.

I went to the manufacturers website (Memorex) and that had to be the single most worthless tech support website I've ever seen.

So, I turn to the knowledge of the ENWorld, hoping to find help.

DC

 

[MasterLich]

K, first off i am gonna assume that you are a techy (at least smarter than the average user) so you should know some of the terminology.

First try making the master drive on the IDE connection. I believe you gotta change the jumper settings on it and any other devices on that IDE connection, this should be seperate from the one yer Hard Drive is on.

Next check to see is the device has DMA enabled. To do this goto:
1) properties on my computer
2) hardware -> Device manager
3) Expand IDE ATA
3) Properties of the secondary IDE channel -> advanced

the drop downs should give you the option fer DMA if available.

Last, the drive might be toast.

 

[Cedric]

http://www.memorex.com/service_support/answers.php?c=21

I don't know if those pages help you or not, but it sounds like a firmware issue to me...

Admittedly though, DVD-R's aren't my forte.

Cedric

 

[DerianCypher]

Thanks for the help ML but it's already the Master on the secondary IDE channel (my cd-r is the slave) and the DMA if available is already on.

And I also already did the firmware update


DC

 

[DerianCypher]

Okay,

The thing will play an audio CD but anything other than an audio cd gives me a "I/O device error"

grrr

does this sound like a dead drive to anyone else?

DC

 

[MasterLich]

It definately sounds like a dead drive to me. Might wanna take it back and ask them to test it out.

 

[tarchon]

Probably the IDE interface is hosed for some reason. Disconnect the slave drive and reconfigure the DVD for "single drive" operation if it has that mode. Sometimes certain IDE devices don't get along right on the same interface. It's also possible that you still have your old CDROM configured as master or single-drive, in which case it may not play well with the DVD in the slave role.

 

[KenM]

It could just be the drivers for it. if you did not totally delete the old drivers for the CD-R there could be a confict.

 

[DerianCypher]

the drive was dead,

I just got back from Best Buy and (suprisingly) they were very courteus(sp?) and exchanged it.

I reinstalled and now it's working.

Thanks everyone for your help!
DC