"Found New Hardware"

I have winxp media version. It's a 9 month old Dell. Worked fine up till now. DVD burner/CD combo was getting a loud and grinding sounding so they said they'd send a replacement. Man came out today and replaced the player. It seems to work fine....reads, burns. But a window keeps popping up -

"Found New Hardware Wizard - There is a problem installing this hardware, CD ROM drive. An error occurred during the install. of the device. The system cannot find the file specified. Click Finish to close Wizard. "

He tried several things like uninstalling it in Dev Mgr both regularly and in safe mode. (In Dev Mgr the dvd/cd is listed and then under it the cd is listed separately with a yellow exclamation mark in front. There's only one physical drive on the comp.) He put in the Dell resource disk with the drivers on it to renew those. He talked with Dell support and they tried the above again and also went into bios settings I think and the sys config settings. To no avail.
Like I said everything seems to work ok, it's just that popup comes and you have to click on the ok several times to close the window.

You guys are so good, I figure you will no some way around reinstalling windows, which is what they want to do. I'd rather not if it's possible.

 

Hi JAK!

Seems you've had excellent help so far, and I wouldn't fear a reinstall if you first back up any personal data that's on your HDD to optical or an external disk.

 

You can try uninstalling the IDE Controller in Device Manager. Also go to the Dell website and look for updated drivers for the chipset.

You could try changing the jumper settings on the drive. If it is set to CS, try using Master or Slave, although it may depend on if another drive is connected to the cable. If it is the only drive on the cable you can use any of these settings.

You could look for a firmware update for the drive. You will need to know the make and model number. Look at the label on the drive. It will probably be available at the Dell website.

Since this is a replacement drive and it is also showing problems it could be with the data cable. If the tech did not disconnect the cable at the motherboard, pull out and reseat the connection there. I would try a replacement data cable, although you would need to check what the warranty stipulates.

Matt

 

In the meantime I had online chatted with Dell spt. He walked me through some things and then took control of my comp remotely and did some things. Interesting to watch someone else manipulating the screen. He uninstalled from dev mgr and it came up correctly as optiarc dvd +/- rw ND3570A, but then later reverted back to the generic dvd/cd rom drives with the yellow exclamation point when rebooted. He did some things in regedit, also. At the end he said

"The dvd drive is working fine."
09/09/2006 05:38:18PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "The system is working fine, however, there is a software conflict on the system due to which operating system needs to be reinstalled."
09/09/2006 05:39:01PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "There is a unique feature called PC restore which will restore the operating system to the condition when the system was shipped."
09/09/2006 05:40:20PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "Are you there?"
09/09/2006 05:40:32PM : "yes"
09/09/2006 05:40:43PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "Thank you."
09/09/2006 05:40:57PM : "why did a conflict happen"
09/09/2006 05:41:03PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "Pc restore will reset the system to factory settings and the issue will be resolved right away."
09/09/2006 05:41:16PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "The conflict has happened due to operating system registry corruption."
09/09/2006 05:41:28PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "The data stored on the system will be lost after performing PC restore."
09/09/2006 05:41:44PM Agent (Sanjeev_01105601): "Do you have some important p[ersonal files stored on the system?"

Forgot to mention the first tech did change the jumper settings. This is the only drive. I mentioned resetting to an earlier date on the comp recovery, but Sanjeev said it would have to be to the orig pc restore.
I got Auto OE Backup to copy my emails. (Hopefully that's a good one.) I don't want to lose them. Have also copied docs, and pictures.
What do you think?

 

They seem to be quite certain that the OS is the cause of the problem. I would not be so sure unless I tested the hardware first. To me, it may be a communication problem between the drive and the motherboard and Windows is seeing the drive as a "generic" because it cannot get the full information from the drive's firmware.

To fix the problem, I would investigate the hardware first. I would not be happy "restoring" my system only to find that, say, the cable connector to the motherboard needed reseating or the cable itself was faulty. (Something else that just crossed my mind is that there may be a minor bug in the BIOS which may be fixed by a BIOS upgrade. A BIOS upgrade is not to be taken lightly though.)

sparrow is right, if you do not have a backup system yet, now is the best time (actually yesterday, because your harddrive could fail at any time). The way I would approach it, I would get a second internal HDD, clone the current drive and do the "restore" on that. That would tell you if the restore will fix the problem, then the second HDD can be used as the backup storage location.

Those are my thoughts anway.

Matt

 

Personally, I think the Dell support Rep is taking the easy way out but at the same time it should fix your problem.

Before trying this, you may want to remove the drive in device manager and then shut down. Then disconnect the drive (both the IDE cable and the molex 4 pin power connector) and then reboot. Then shutdown again and reconnect the drive and reboot. Is the drive now recognized properly? If no go, you can try repeating the same procedure but after the first disconnection boot into the BIOS (think its F2 on your machine) and remove any reference to the CDROM drive in Boot Sequence, F10 out and boot into Windows. Then shutdown and reconnect and boot again into the BIOS and put the reference to CDROM back in the Boot Sequence and F10 out and then boot back into Windows. Is the drive now recognized properly?

You can also try going to the Sonic web site and reading FAQ's as my guess is thats what Dell had on your machine for CD/DVD software and its possible you got a corrupt update somewhere along the way - I don't know if they have a drive detection engine but its a very real possibility and by default they have been running their background updater on your machine since day one.

Good Luck.

 

"boot again into the BIOS and put the reference to CDROM back in the Boot Sequence "
How do you put the reference back in? And would you put reference to CDROM or to the DVDRW?
I just did this
"remove the drive in device manager and then shut down. Then disconnect the drive (both the IDE cable and the molex 4 pin power connector) and then reboot. Then shutdown again and reconnect the drive and reboot. "
Nothing changed with this.

 

The method Rockster2U is suggesting resets the ASPI drivers. I have used it on several occasions with success, sometimes not. Now I reinstall the drivers:
http://www.cd-burner-help.com/aspi-layer.htm
http://radified.com/ASPI/forceaspi.htm
It would be best to uninstall your burning program, (re)install the ASPI drivers, then reinstall the burning program. The last time(s) I used the ASPI drivers installation, the drive did not appear in Device Manager until I reinstalled the burner software.
There may be a slight element of risk that Windows will not recognise the drive at all if the ASPI drivers get corrupted, so keep this for if you look like doing the restore.

Another derivation may be to uninstall the burning program, use Rockster's method, then reinstall the burning program.

I think Rockster2U will agree with these, he probably knows a bit more than I do about Dell's.

In the BIOS settings go to the "Boot Sequence" or "Boot Options" section. Make a note of the original setting. Look through the available settings, there should be a selection that does not contain a CD/DVD drive, choose this (as long as the HDD is still listed as an option). After you have disconnected, rebooted, etc, go back into the BIOS and change the setting back to what it was originally.

Matt