Help! Problem with my new drive

[guitardan]

I just bought a Philips 1660K Internal ReWriter, to replace my old DVD Re Writer which died. It was my only ReWriter but I had a DVD ROM drive as a slave.
Now I removed the old drive and connected up the new one in exactly the same way which the old one was, which the manual comfirmed anyway (I did connect a cable for ANALOG AUDIO RGGL Which the manual didn't state but that was connected to my old drive) I set it to master, connected the IDE and the power cable. The manual said to turn on the pc and then to install the Nero cd that came with the drive, but my computer didn't recognise the new drive nor the existing DVD ROM! I got it to recognise the DVD ROM but it wont play discs (I assume this is cos the master is not recognised and working properly?) Both drives have power and open and close.

I wonder whether I should've uninstalled the old drives drivers before installing the new drive or whether I've made a simple error in connecting it. Any ideas would be appreciated as this is driving me nuts.

[budz]

did you set the jumper to MASTER on the new drive? the jumper is behind the drive. usually the configuration for it is the first little slot is CABLE SELECT, second slot is SLAVE & last slot is MASTER. also make sure the drive is recognized in your motherboard BIOS.

[guitardan]

yeah I set the Jumper to Master. I don't think it did recognise it on the bios, any idea what could be wrong?

[budz]

go into your bios and enable it. by any chance are you sure you're using the ide cable correctly? make sure the drive is connected to master on the ide cable. or you could try buying a new ide cable to see if that will work.

[redwudz]

My first suspicion would be the IDE cable. You don't need any drivers for a DVD drive, they are part of the XP OS. Especially check that the cable is plugged into the motherboard properly. I've pulled them lose before when changing drives.

Next try setting it to slave and use the end of the IDE cable that's hooked to the DVD ROM. Or just try another IDE cable. You can check the BIOS at boot and see if it's recognized there, but it should be automatic. It should also show up in your 'Device Manager'.

You could try uninstalling the IDE channel the drive is on in the Manager and rebooting the computer and see if that makes any difference. But I would try a IDE cable replacement.

[guitardan]

Thanks guys I will try some of these things in the morning, I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to messing with the bios but I understand what you mean about the IDE, I thought it's ok though cos obviously it's the same cable for both drives with the new one as master but the slave is recognised. oh yeah and it isn't showing up in device manager at the moment. thanks.

[guitardan]

Very strange. Last night I tried ejecting the tray and it wouldn't work, I thought my drive was dead!

So today I really pushed in the power cable hard and thought if it still didn't eject I'd try another power cable and then sort out the problem of the pc recognising it after sorting out the power problem.
But Eureka! It recognised my new drive! I haven't a clue why, I did double check all connections but they were firm anyway. Wierd, thanks for the help though.