Resolved Drives Intermittently reading disks

I did a clean install of Windows XP Pro. Everything went fine when I tried to install Norton Internet Security 2006 the CD-ROM wouldn't read any disk at all the CD-RW would read the disk intermittently. The CD-RW let me install certain programs but not others. Device Manager says everything is working fine. Could it be both drives are dying at the same time there are both 5 years old? NIS2006 actually let get as far as NMain.exe was corrupt or missing. Any suggestions?

 

Yes, quite possible. Your CDROM seems to be dead already with CDRW on the last leg. Anyway, today anything in computers thats over 5 years is antique .

Try cleaning the CD writer with a cleaning disk or open the tray & blow compressed air into it (very effective). If it fails, you can open it up & clean the lens manually (very good DIY project) or change the drive.

 

I'll certainly give your suggestion a try. Thanks for your response.

 

Cleaning didn't work. The CD-RW will only read the Win XP Pro disk. The CD-ROM will not read anything.

 

I would pull out and reseat the data ribbon cable to the drives (and at the motherboard).

Check if the Cdrom LED flashes at startup, if not, the drive is not communicating with the motherboard.

Try booting to the Windows XP disk using the CDrom. If it boots to the disk, the problem will be in the Windows operating system.

Have you installed the motherboard/chipset drivers? If you are installing SP2 you may need the latest IDE controller drivers that will be included with the chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's website (install the chipset drivers before you install any software).

Check the way they are jumpered. I would put them both on the secondary IDE controller. Set the CDrom to master and the CD-RW to slave. The firmware of older drives "preferred" it this way. (Even changing the configuration, booting to Windows and the changing back should reset the Windows drivers).

The CDrom may be faulty and is causing errors for the CD-RW. Try disconnecting the cables to the CDrom drive. If so, you could test the CDrom drive on another computer.

Matt

 

Ended up getting A new CR-ROM and CD-RW and all is fine so far. Thanks to all who responded.

 

Glad to hear it's going.

For me personally the opposite is true. The CDrom in this computer is a 98 model. I stripped it out of a workstation given away from were I work. It was hardly used during it's time in the workstation and serves me well along aside my DVD burner.
The floppy drive is from a 486 machine (early 90's), it works as well as any I could buy today. (Maybe the point is quality of manufacture.)

If people find a hardware fault and want to investigate if it may be able to be fixed without automatically purchasing new equipment, I will help as much as possible. If we put time limits on equipment we may as well put a "sticky" at the head of this forum... "If it's old, get a new one ". Not the reason I'm here.

Matt

 

matt, I also do not believe in throwing away hardware without trying out different things first, but there is a limit to which I would fool around wasting mine & other people time and energy.

 

I obviously did something right because the machine is rockin'. I did try unplugging the IDE and Power cables from the CD-ROM and made the CD-RW the master still the same problem with intermittent reading of disks. Thanks for your help though it's really appreciated.