bios loses cd-rom info

[JackOByte]

I have been asked to look at this computer for a friend.It was playing up by not playing cd's using media player originally. When I went into the bios both the cd-rm and the dvd-rom were described as hyroglifics (definately not the spelling but say it as it looks). I reset the CMOS and replaced the battery but despite originally recording them correctly they have now reverted to the garbage. I was trying to do a clean install of xp pro as I originally thought the problem might be software based and deleted all of the partitions on the drive. I have also tried to connect a different cd-rom but despite all of this I cannot get the cd to transfer all of the xp files as it gives error messages either at or just after loading setup.
can someone give me advice on what to do next please.

many thanks Jack

 

[edfair]

Both on the same IDE channel? Sounds like something in the data is shorted or grounded, or possibly one is dumping on top of the other.

You might try them one at a time to see if either IDs correctly and works by itself.

The cases I've seen like this were CDROM problems and ended up replacing both.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[JackOByte]

Thanks for that I have tried to split the cd's but still got rubbish in the bios and errors upon loading. Anything else you can suggest.