I can't install my 2 new burners!

[dafoe]

Let me start off by saying I am not a novice. I built my last two computers for myself and a few for friends. I have installed dozens of drives with no problem.

Anyway, I bought 2 drives at Staples on Black Friday: A generic cdrw (52x24x48) I don't expect it to last long, but what the hell- it was free. And a Pacific Digital 4x DVD -/+ RW.

When I installed the DVD burner. it wouldn't show up unless it was installed as the master with no other drive. I have 2 hard drives on one ide and my two drives are on the other .

I hooked up the drive by itself and got it to show up on my PC. Now here's the weird part: The drive will act as a reader. BUT, none of my burning programs will reecognize it as a burner. I tried Nero, Stomp and even the piece of crap burning program that came with the drive. I just get a message saying "no recordable device found."

After updating my aspi layer and downloading a useless "driver" from Pacific Digital I decided that maybe the burner was defective. So I tried the CDRW and I had the same problem!

Both my old drives, my 40x CDRW and my 1x DVD-R burners work fine.

Does anybody have any idea what's going on here? I hate to take the DVD burner back. A 1x burner was cool when I bought it 2 years ago, but I'm getting sick of spending an hour to burn a freakin disc!

I am running Windows 2000 PE with Intel 850mv MB/ PEntium 1.7 GHZ CPU / 80 GB HD /256 RDRAM

Any advice from more experienced/knowledgeable members would really be appreciated.

Thanks.

[willy_annand]

Sounds like a Master/Slave issue.
Check your jumpers.

[redwudz]

Well, here's a long shot but it has worked for me before. You could try deleting the devices in the Device Manager and let the OS replace them, then reboot. Sounds like you know about the master/slave setup jumpers and have them correct. Backup important files and have the OS disk handy just in case.

[DVD Master]

Check your BIOS settings !!!

[MOVIEGEEK]

Update the burn software and replace the IDE cable.

[grindliner]

Bios upgrade?

[willy_annand]

Movie Geek, I would get a new photo, people might think you like little boys.

[myckee]

Check your BIOS settings to make sure slave drives are on for both primary and secondary ide channels. The make sure you check your jumpers on the back of the drive to make sure one that on each ide cable you only have 1 master drive and 1 slave drive. If you have 2 of the same you will have the type of problems you describe.

[dafoe]

Thanks for the tips guys.

I did finally get the (DVD) burner to work. Oddly enough only as a master. I could not install a slave.

Soooo, I replaced the IDE cable and the problem is solved. I now have my Lite on for ripping and my combo drive for DVD/CD burning.

However, I still can't get Nero or Stomp to recognize the burner as a burner. The drive even shows up on Stomp but Stomp will not acknowledge it as a burner.

I want to use Nero to burn. Nero has no problems with my old 1x DVD burner. Will upgrading Nero help, or is there another problem?

[Poppa_Meth]

upgrade Nero to the latest version and see if it helps. it may just not have a profile for your burner yet.

[birdygal]

I'm curious to your problem as I have a P4 1.7 G cpu on an Soyo motherboard that I can't get any master slave configuration to work for long. My motherboard has 4 ide controllers and they only work as one drive per controller. Slave configurations always would drop out within a week or two when I did get them working.

[Popee]

You guys better watch that Master / Slave referencing. According to Los Angeles county California, that sort of reference is insensitive and they are adopting legislation to have it changed to Primary and Secondary.

Only in California!

[MOVIEGEEK]

You guys better watch that Master / Slave referencing. According to Los Angeles county California, that sort of reference is insensitive and they are adopting legislation to have it changed to Primary and Secondary.

Only in California!

I read that too,what a joke!

@dafoe,
Go to www.nero.com or www.ahead.de to update Nero,I would also install ForceASPI drivers.

[Gazorgan]

You have to make sure of the following or it may not work:

1) Your bios settings are correct. AutoDetect doesn't always work (doesn't for me with removeable drives, and it's a 1 year old board set to autodetect). Force the issue and make it detect all drives.

2) Jumpers on the drives are correct. Your options generally are Master or Single/Slave(assumes master is present)/Master with Slave Present/ Cable Select. Note: Cable select only works with cables designed for it. Generic IDE cables don't support cable select. Look at the cable for a Master/Slave tag. Master/Slave cables don't like drives set to anything else but Cable select (C/S).

3) Did you plug in the power cable? Sounds silly, but you know how it goes...

4) Did you wiggle loos the cable connection to the motherboard? Sounds silly but you know...

5) ASPI layer? Some software needs an ASPI layer for some devices. W2K can access a DVDRW drive 4 different ways, and only 2 will really work better than 1x. Get the latest Adaptec ASPI driver.

6) Delete the old device. Removing a CDROM and putting a DVDRW in it's place can greatly confuse your computer. In particular your UDMA settings. It's best to delete the old devices and re-boot to force a windows autodetect. This is probably the #1 reason an 'upgrade' fails when repalcing a CDRW drive with a DVDRW.

7) Software. Do you think NERO 5.9.x.x can recognize that brand new NEC 1300a drive? Nope, doesn't have a clue what it is, way too new. Get the latest updated software.

8) Never assume teh sofware works. DVDDEcryptor has known issues with an NEC-1300a, as in it doesn't do the buffer underrun at all. That means coasters if you do anything during the burn. This can apply to a specific drive/software combination. Try different software to isolate the problem.

9) When all else fails, call you computer buddy for help!

[dafoe]

Once again, thanks for all the replies guys. I really appreciate everone taking the time to help.

As it turns out, I just needed a new IDE cable and an updated version of Nero.

Now I wont have to buy another drive until the dual layer burners come out next summer!