CD-Rom: Strange problem

[jermocide]

Hi everybody,

Here's my situation. Hopefully I can make it easy to follow. My parents have a computer Whose cd-rom decided to go bad. The computer recognizes it and when you load a cd and double click the icon under My Computer it reads this error "D:\is unaccessible The device is not ready" Well I didn't bother with it because I was going to install a new cd burner anyway. So I moved the cd-rom to the primary slave position and added the cd-burner to the secondary master position. The cd-burner worked great for about 1 hour and than started coming up with the same error as the other cd-rom "D:\is unaccessible The device is not ready". Now here is the diagnostics I used. I pulled both the cd-rom and the burner out of their computer. I put the burner in my computer to make sure it was still good but it came up with the same error, so now I figure the burner is bad now. Next I took my good cd-rom from my computer and put it into my parents computer to see if their computer was killing cdroms but it worked fine and has worked fine for the last 2 days. So, is it possible that the original bad cd-rom could have destroyed the cd burner when they were both installed on the same machine? I've never heard of such a thing but that's what I'm led to believe. Also do you think the burner is now bad for good also or is there anyway to get it going again. Probably not but it's new so I can exchange it. My parents computer is a p2-450, 256mg Ram, Win 98 machine with a USB scanner, USB game controller, HP printer, regular game pad, voodoo 3000 vid card, Soundblaster sound card, and 10/100 Nic attached to it. Let me know what you think and Thanks in advance for any comments.

Jermocide

 

[edfair]

They can't kill by proximity. If on the same cable, possibly, but not likely. Suspect the original might be dirty, you could try a cleaning disk. The burner fried.

Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

It is extremely unlikely that your parents' PC would have made the burner "go bad", and it is even more unlikely that a CD-ROM would have made it "go bad".

When you changed the position of the drive on the cable, did you also change the jumper on the drive to reflect that new position?

Did you use the BIOS's Auto-Detect feature after adding the drive? I have found, especially with Award BIOSes, that this can make the difference between the O/S seeing the device or not.

If your new burner is under warranty, you could try replacing it.

A good test would be to boot from a floppy disk (on either - or even both) machines with a system disk.

Samsung have a great DOS driver which recognises just about any make, model and even firmware version of most CD drives. I mean burners as well as ROMs, and even DVD drives.

It's here, on Samsung's site:

http://samsungelectronics.com/support/faqs/cdrom/fa_1127_en.html

Or you could find your manufacturer's driver here - but you'll have to register

http://www.driverguide.com/

You'd need to create a DOS boot disk, with the CD-ROM driver and the correct parameters listewd in config.sys, and mscdex and corresponding parameters in autoexec.bat.

If you need help with this, I can provide full details.

I hope this helps

 

[jermocide]

Thanks for the response.
Yea I changed the proper jumper settings. I changed the cables, ect. The bios is set to auto detect. It sees and recognizes both the cd-rom and burner but when you try to access them from My Computer it comes up with the same error for both of them. It comes up with the same error in my machine as well. When you put a cd in the green light comes on for about 1 second but it doesn't even begin to spin the cd. It probably is a coincidence that the new burner would die with the same problem and error as the original cd-rom. The burner stopped working within an hour after installation. The computer was not restarted or anything, it just stopped working and coming up with the prementioned error. Also, I did boot to a floppy and from the A:> prompt I could switch over to the d:> prompt which is the burner but when I tried to accessthe cd by typing dir it pretty much said the same thing "something about being not ready, abort, retry, ect."
It just seems like whatever caused the first cd-rom to go bad caused the burner to go bad in the exact same way. It's a new burner so I can just exchange it but it just struck me as funny that the burner would die in the same way. But like mentioned earlier my cd-rom works fine in the computer so it's nothing with the computer thats frying the cd-roms thats why I thought it might be the other cd-rom. Thank you all for the responses and appreciate any additional comments.
Jermocide

 

[edfair]

Thats the way Chinese fortune cookies crumble. Wierd things like this happen regularly. And boy they take you down some real dillys of paths.

Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[ray436]

like Ed said, it happens. Actually, it followed one of the general "rules" of electronics.

If a product is properly engineered and then properly used, it will:

a) be DOA (and should have never left the factory)
b) die of whats called 'crib-death' (due to a bad part, or workmanship)
c) live long and prosper (at least as long as the maker intended it to, anyways)

 

[jermocide]

Thanks for your responses. I think I'll mark this one up as crib death. I'll post back if it gives me more problems with the new exchanged burner. As additional info it was a $150 Creative Labs 8-4-32 burner and for the hour or so it worked, it was very easy to use and worked great especially for burning audio cd's from mp3's. Again, thanks for all the responses, this forum has helped me many times.

 

[edfair]

AKA infant mortality.

Ed Fair
efair@atlnet.com

Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply.

Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[nlm9802]

interesting.. I also just bought a creative blaster 8x4x32 cdrw, its been awesome for the price ($146), hope it doesnt crap out on me
its been good so far though *knock on wood*
good luck with your new one.

 

[ray436]

I think the Creative drive is the same as my CDRW7585 made by Matsushita as a OEM part. Its been good to me so far - 6 months. check out this page to see some good info about it:

http://www.cdrw7585.cjb.net

 

[ray436]

scratch that address, it should be:

http://www.cw7585.cjb.net

one day I'll learn to type.

 

[gcastillo]

I bougth a HP CD Writer 9150i. It worked fine for just one disk... now, when I try to add folders or files, it reboots my machine... another case of "infant mortality"??