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Help! My Computer Won't Recognize My DVD Writer!

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absolutelymagic

Technical User
Dec 3, 2002
2
US
Hi all,

I spent hours last night trying to install the I/O Magic 4X Dual Format DVD RW but I couldn't get it to work.

Here's some background info on my computer. I have a Dell 360 workstation running on Windows XP Professional. This computer is less than 2 months old. The computer only comes with one optical drive - a 52X CD-RW. There's only one hard drive in the computer. The hard drive is the primary master, and the CD-RW is the secondary Master (factory setting).

Here's what happened when I tried to put in the DVD Writer. Since the IDE cables are really short and oddly positioned, the only possible slot for the DVD Writer was to be the Secondary Slave..having it sit right underneath the CD-RW. Factory setting for the jumper the CD-RW was Cable Select so I left it as is. I also set the DVD Writer to Cable Select.

Turned on the computer, and nothing happened. Waited for a minute, then the computer beeped. Then it showed on the screen that there was no drives detected on the Secondary IDE slot. It gave me two options. F1 to continue, or F2 to configure the drives. I chose F2, and changed all the drive settings to "Auto", then it showed up all are "unknown drives" other than the hard drive. I then started the computer again, and it gave me the same error. I chose F1 this time and windows started up. But then when I went to my computer, there was no optical drives listed. Neither my original CD-RW or the new DVD Writer was there.

I turned off the computer, and tried a different jumper setting. Still the same. I then tried all possible combination of jumper settings, still the same. Bios could not recognize the DVD-Writer AND the CD writer.

Finally, I got tired of it and replaced the DVD Writer with a Cendyne 16X DVD-Rom I bought yesterday. Same setting, didn't touch anything. Same IDE cable. And boom..there is, it worked beautifully. Windows started right away, and automatically recognized it and installed the driver for it. I put in a DVD movie and it worked fine.

So what gives? Why wouldn't the DVD Writer work? What did I do wrong?

Thanks a lot!!!!!!
 
Some writers prefer to be master , perhaps it could not
work as cable select .If you use cable select you should use it on both devices on the ide chl. Who knows .
 
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