CD-RW drive quits at random occations

[Bruno2000]

My Sony CRX145E dies everynow and then..
When it does the whole computer freezes and won't respond ,all i can do then is to reset.
When it starts up it isn't recognized by bios and not by Windows either.
The only way to get it to work is by a shutdown ,after a shutdown it works for a while and then it's the same thing again. The other Cd drive is still working.

Any help is appreciated ,i have Win 98Se

 

[kestrel1]

When you say that it isn't recognised in the BIOS, do you mean it has never been recognised or only after you reset the system?

 

[Bruno2000]

Sorry for not beeing more specific ,it's been working fine for years ,it happened 2 weeks ago and won't go away.

Both Cd drives are detected at startup ,then in Windows everything freezes after a while (not a blue screen) and i'm forced to reset.. Then it only finds one drive.

 

[kestrel1]

Sounds like the drive maybe failing. Just a suggestion, try flashing the firmware for the dodgy drive. Have a look at the sony website.

 

[penybont]

Just had a look at the original message. The first question I would ask is how have you connected the drives and CD's.

One drive to be master, then one CD as a slave to it. Not Two CD's together since if you copy a CD for example then the data is on the same cable for read and write.
Another thing to consider is, if you are copying a file from a hard drive to a CD, which drive is supplying which CD etc.
There times when conflicts like these dont show themselves all the time.
See if you can discover what is connected to what and what is the order as far as master slave etc.