new CDRW not working

I bought a new CDRW for my AMD K6 with a Biostar M5ALA motherboard, after the old CDRW failed. I installed it and hooked up in exactly the same manner, but have been unable to make it work apparently because of secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) failure as listed in the device manager. I upgraded the driver. I looked at all the connections; they seem to be good and tight. The new DCRW is set as master just the same way the old one was. When booting up the CD-ROM is found but does not appear in my drives list. Is this a failure of the secondary IDE controller on the motherboard? Does anybody have any suggestions how I could fix this?

 

My CDRW drive is not listed under drives in the device manager. It is listed by itself above the drives. Mine is USB connected.

Are you saying the CD Player doesn't work as a player or just doesn't make cd's? What sort of software are you using? Does the drive show in the My computer window? Is the power light on? Does the drawer open and shut? Is there anything sharing the secondary IDE slot? I have a zip drive as slave on mine.

Aren't computers fun?

Bill

 

The drive does not register at all under My Computer; it is not accessible, although the tray will open. The secondary IDE controller that connects the CD writer/player to the motherboard has a yellow exclamation mark, which says it is not working.

 

ooooook

I would go to the exclamation point and highlightit and click remove.

Then shutdown, wait ten seconds and power up.

Your Secondary thing should reinstall. If not...well let's hope it does.

My IDE controllers drivers are c\windows\options\cabs\esdi_506.pdr and IOS.vxd. I suppose these could be corrupted in your windows installation. This would require extracting the files from the windows installation disk and putting the fresh copies in the right folders.

Bill

 

I can't remove the secondary IDE controller withough removing the primary and bus master also, and if I remove all of them Windows won't boot. The driver is just fine.

 

well how about pwr dwn and unplug pwr and 40 pin and reboot without CDRW. See if the IDE controller exclamation point goes away. If it does, then plug in the CDRW and bootup again. If that doesn't do it, maybe you have a bad drive....

If the exclamation doesn't go away, maybe a reinstall of your MB hardware drivers or a reinstall of Windows.

 

Thanks. I think you got it. The exclamation mark goes away when I remove the drive and comes back when I hook up the drive again and boot up. I also hooked up my bad old drive again, and the exclamation mark did not return. So there must be something wrong with the new drive. I am going return it and exchange it. Thanks again.

 

You're welcome, glad to help.

Bill

 

Hehehe ...... This one I'm saving.

 

hbreder .....

Sorry for laughing at the above - just realized you were the person that was having problems with the old CDRW last week. i've always had better success setting up CDRWs as slave to either a DVD Drive or another CDROM that was set as master. You may be getting a yellow mark because oyu have multiple drives still in your system - they are only going to show up in Safe Mode however. As to the fear of removing the bus master in order to reset primary and secondary IDE controllers - not to worry - they will come back. Also do you have a Via Apollo chipset on your motherboard? If so, upgrade your 4 in 1 drivers.

 

I don't have a CD-ROM or DVD drive on my computer. The only drives I have are my hard drive, my floppy drive and one empty bay for the CDRW/CD-ROM. They are one on top of the other in my tower. The hard drive is connected to me primary IDE controller; the secondary IDE controller has nothing connected to it, because I took the CDRW out.

 

P.S. I tried to remove both IDE controllers and the bus master twice and each time the computer hung up and never got into windows. Each time I had to resort to Go Back to recover my previous settings.

I have a Biostar M5ALA system board, one that is not being made anymore. (My computer is a couple of years old)