Firmware flash of Micro Advantage8DVDRW disables NEC1300a!

[noxt]

I'm running XP SP1. I installed a Micro Advantage 8DVDRW-B13 drive onto my system which already had a Plextor 48X CD writer and a NEC 1300a DVD writer. The Micro Advantage seemed to work fine but I wanted to update the firmware (from 055 to 059) so I downloaded the Windows updater from the Micro Advantage website. When I fired it up I selected the 8DVDRW-B13 drive as the one to flash. The updater reported that it was erasing the old firmware and then a progress bar began and then the system froze. I'm pretty sure the 8DVDRW-B13 is fried -- the bios doesn't recognize it now -- says: disabled. The bios recognizes the NEC drive, but it does not show up in windoze explorer. It does not show up in disk manager and when I try to get windoze to recognize it (control panel > hardware), windoze says it cannot un-disable it. Can I rescue this drive? Any ideas?

noxt

[chas0039]

I would first disconnect the Micro drive drive and see if you can get your bios to recognize what you had before. Reset your bios to defaults and reboot to see if there are any problems with your NEC. I would then disconnect all the optical drives and connect just the Micro drive and see if it is available. Also look to see if Micro has any utilities. If it is still fried check over at CDFreaks.com and look for one of the programs that will reflash the EPROM in DOS and see if they are usable in your drive. I am not familiar with Micro so you might do some checking to see if it is the same as any other brand. It could be BTC. Good luck.

[lordsmurf]

I believe it's the BTC1008IM drive.

[noxt]

lordsmurf: I believe you are right; I should have mentioned that.

chas0039: I'm a little confused. I thought all traces of DOS had been removed from XP. Also, if I remember correctly (and it's been a long time since dos) dos can't see optical drives because of the aspi layer or some such. On the other hand one can download a dos version of the flash program from the Micro site. If windows can't see the drive and the bios says disabled, how will dos see it? I guess I'm more than a "little" confused.

both: Thanks for the replies.

[chas0039]

I can still boot up DOS prior to Windows using F8 and also from a boot disk but that is not the question here. You need to get to CDFreaks and see what answers they can provide. They have much more experience than I at dealing with dead drives.

[noxt]

I solved the fried Micro Advantage 8DVDRW-B13 problem by returning the drive for a replacement. After all, it was their software from their web site that burned their burner (and screwed up my system). It is likely that I've solved the other problem (Windows not recognizing the NEC 1300a even though the bios does). I rolled the os back to a restore point I had set a couple of days ago. I decided to do this when the bios recognized a dvd reader drive that Windows did not recognize. In other words the bios was seeing 4 drives but Windows was only seeing 3. After the rollback Windows sees all 4 drives. The next step is to replace the dvd reader with the NEC drive and find out if windows will see it. I'm pretty sure it will. If it doesn't I'll be back.