CD and DVD RW drives mis-identified

WinXP Pro - Dell Dimension XPS P4 3gh 1g ram, 3 hd 300g with two burners: SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-248F, SONY DVD RW DRU-500AX. Somehow both burners now have the same drivers and neither will allow burning. Bios is most recent, WinXP current (no SP2), Device Manager identifies both drivers correctly. In Windows Explorer devices are identified correctly until a writable media is installed. Explorer then changes the description to generic CD Rom on both. Driver for Samsung is most recent, no driver update available for Sony. I've uninstalled and installed several times. I've disconnected the Sony from power, booted and then reconnected. Each time the drive is found, but the same drivers are installed. I have un-installed EZ CD Creator, but have MyDVD and Power DVD installed, but I think it is a Windows problem.

Each drive can play the appropriate media. You guys helped me with some spy ware a month or so ago. I would appreciate some more help.

Thanks.

 

As you're using Roxio EZCD Creator (v5.xx I presume?) have you turned off the XP built in burning support, as this can/will interfere with other burning applications? Right click both drives in My Computer, and tunnel down to the recording tab and disable it (in both drives).

Make sure EZCD... has the latest updates from the Roxio site.

 

Paul,

Thanks for the response. I followed your advice and the CD RW now works, but the Sony DVD still is detected as a CD-ROM device. For some reason, WinXP thinks it is a CD-ROM drive.

Any other thoughts?

 

You have triple checked your jumper settings on the back of the drives and swapped the master/slave positions around?

Uninstall the DVD, Power off the PC. Disconnect the ribbon cable from the DVD to the IDE socket on the MOBO. Boot up windows. Shutdown and reconnect the cable and bootup again to let XP redetect it. Any luck?

A long shot, but maybe a firmware update is available for the drive that MAY address this issue, even if not documented to do so?

 

I didn't check the jumper settings because they haven't been changed since it worked. I did disconnect the power cord to the drive and tried to get WinXP to redetect with out luck. One of the first things I did was check the appropriate Sony website and performed a "firmware" upgrade successfully, but it didn't help.

I'll try the ribbon cable and let you know. Thanks.

DM

 

The disconnecting the ribbon cable didn't work, but I solved the problem. Unfortunately I'm not sure how. I decided to systematically try a combination of things, so: I uninstalled the offending drive and then disconnected it. While it was disconnected, I uninstalled all of the CD/DVD writing/playing software, ran Roxizap, ran Norton's Disk Doctor, restarted, did a clean install of EZCD Creator, MyDVD and PowerDVD, ran Disk Doctor again and finally reconnected the drive. Although it appears the same, it will write!

I'm not sure what in the sequence fixed the problem, but I'll take it. One thing I did learn was that while the drive wouldn't write, it corrupted several new disks. I learned that by running the Sony DriveChek.

Thanks for all of the help. I always appreciate the folks at WindowsBBS.

 

Good to hear you got it up and running Mike. Whatever fixed it?

Thanks for posting back.