Here's an interesting situation. Have a Toshiba SD-5372 combo drive on a 1Bit MB with an Athlon 64 with XP Pro. Working fine up to about 6 weeks ago when it failed to recognize any CD R/Ws. Insert blank or recorded CD R/W, and the activity light winks about 25-30 times then stays solid until I eject the disk.
I really worked hard on this! Figured it's probably bad media (Sony), so I bought a stack of Maxells and then later Verbatims - still no go. Strangely it will read and write DVD +/- R/Ws labelled from HP and Verbatim plus it will read a variety CD-Rs, both homebrewed and commercially prep'd. No CD R/Ws though. I realize there are two lasers involved. I cleaned the laser with a cleaning disk - no help. I tried a brand new cable - no help. I left the case open all day thinking it was heat - no help. I tried putting it on the Secondary IDE channel - no help. It is the only IDE drive in the system thanks to SATA. I went and purchased a completely new and completely different brand of combo DRIVE!!! Now get this - Same problem with that. Put the Toshiba back in. Uninstalled the Toshiba in Dev Mgr - rebooted - no help and XP did find and locate and successfully set up the drivers as expected. I've completely uninstalled Nero and used the Nero cleaning tool - no help. I've uninstalled Alcohol 120 which then zapped the virtual drive crud - no help. ASPIchk shows no ASPI layer. Flashed the Toshiba firmware to the latest firmware set (TU56) - no help. (Are you noticing a pattern here...?)
Interesting point - when viewed in Dev Mgr, this thing shows two (2) Primary IDE channels and two (2) Secondary IDE channels in the following order top-to-bottom: Pri - Pri - Sec - Sec. I believe that's not right and I also now believe it may be the source of this confounded problem since the newly purchased device exhibited the same problems.
Can the experts here tell me if having a dupe set of IDE channels is right? And how do we get them uninstalled if we suspect that's the CD R/W problem or issue here?
Thank you all! Nice site!
I really worked hard on this! Figured it's probably bad media (Sony), so I bought a stack of Maxells and then later Verbatims - still no go. Strangely it will read and write DVD +/- R/Ws labelled from HP and Verbatim plus it will read a variety CD-Rs, both homebrewed and commercially prep'd. No CD R/Ws though. I realize there are two lasers involved. I cleaned the laser with a cleaning disk - no help. I tried a brand new cable - no help. I left the case open all day thinking it was heat - no help. I tried putting it on the Secondary IDE channel - no help. It is the only IDE drive in the system thanks to SATA. I went and purchased a completely new and completely different brand of combo DRIVE!!! Now get this - Same problem with that. Put the Toshiba back in. Uninstalled the Toshiba in Dev Mgr - rebooted - no help and XP did find and locate and successfully set up the drivers as expected. I've completely uninstalled Nero and used the Nero cleaning tool - no help. I've uninstalled Alcohol 120 which then zapped the virtual drive crud - no help. ASPIchk shows no ASPI layer. Flashed the Toshiba firmware to the latest firmware set (TU56) - no help. (Are you noticing a pattern here...?)
Interesting point - when viewed in Dev Mgr, this thing shows two (2) Primary IDE channels and two (2) Secondary IDE channels in the following order top-to-bottom: Pri - Pri - Sec - Sec. I believe that's not right and I also now believe it may be the source of this confounded problem since the newly purchased device exhibited the same problems.
Can the experts here tell me if having a dupe set of IDE channels is right? And how do we get them uninstalled if we suspect that's the CD R/W problem or issue here?
Thank you all! Nice site!