IDE Controllers and CD ROMS

[cheezit]

In the device manager on my computer, it says there is a problem with the Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo). It says device not present, not working properly or does not have all the drivers installed. (Code 10) Try updating drivers.

I tried that and it says that the best ones are already there.

The other problem is that both the CD-RW and the DVD-ROM have both disappeared from the device manager. They don't show up when I double click on My Computer either. They just seem to come and go at will. (Theirs, not mine.) On another board, it was suggested that I go into the device manager and remove them and reboot so that Windows would reinstall them. I tried that one of the times that they were showing in the device manager. Windows won't reinstall them. They are just not there. I can't even use the restore disk because I have no workable CD player.

I tried system restore, to no avail.

Suggestions?

Incidently, how to I find out if "plug and play" is operational?

Thanks.

Also, I am running a Compaq computer with Windoze ME. It has a 60 gig HD and 256 megs of RAM.

 

[Vaib]

Well, first you should open your computer case and check that the ide cables are properly attached to your cd and dvd drives and to the motherboard. Check the power cable as well.

If that doesn't help, then you should check the jumper settings so that the there aren't two masters or two slaves on a single ide cable. Ask for instructions if you don't know how to change the jumper settings.

 

[Donny_B]

There could be a setting in the BIOS that needs to be corrected.

You enter the BIOS when the computer is booting...your owner's manual should tell you what key to press, or it may pop up what key to press on the screen as your system is booting.

 

[doofus125]

Ok, before you do anything.....You need to test the drives in Dos to see if they are accessabe when booting with a dos driver....you will need a 3 1/2" floppy and you will go into "add/remove programs" in the control panel and I believe it's the 3rd tab will have the option to create a boot disk....create a boot disk.....then reboot the computer with the disk in and the computer should come up with a menu asking to boot with or without cd rom support...choose to boot with cd rom support and it should detect the drives and load a standard cd rom driver and assign drive letters.....Now if you are able to do this then your problem is software/driver related and not hardware......let's see what the results are before I give anymore information......

 

[Raterus]

I've never seen it happen personally, but your IDE cable connecting them on the inside might be going bad. When they work, do they work well?

--Michael

 

[doofus125]

I've never seen it happen personally, but your IDE cable connecting them on the inside might be going bad. When they work, do they work well?

--Michael

My mother purchaced a computer from Comp USA and had purchaced an extended warrenty and when I took her system in for warrenty repair on the Power supply, they changed the IDE cables to both the hard drives and to the dvd-rom and cd-rw drive, well they put a cheep cable on and we couldn't figure out why the cd-rw drive didn't always want to work and when I opened up the system I found the replaced cables (and I was po'd because I had put the round IDE cables in and they replaced with cheep flat ribbon cables) well, the cheep cables did not make good contact with any of the drives so I had to drive the 60 miles round trip to complain and get my cables back, of which they had to give me new cables because they put them back into someone else system....anyways, it turned out that the ends of the cables were very cheeply made and fit loosely on any drive and when the drive would spin up it would vibrate them loose......so it is possible that your cables are not getting a good connection, they should be snug, but if they appear to be loose then u need to replace them....depending on where u get the cables they can be cheep (like $1).......I have seen good cables jiggle themselves to a point of being loose after extended use of a "loud" cd-rom drive...... (a loud cd-rom drive is the one that sounds like it's takeing off).......

 

[cheezit]

Ok, before you do anything.....You need to test the drives in Dos to see if they are accessabe when booting with a dos driver....you will need a 3 1/2" floppy and you will go into "add/remove programs" in the control panel and I believe it's the 3rd tab will have the option to create a boot disk....create a boot disk.....then reboot the computer with the disk in and the computer should come up with a menu asking to boot with or without cd rom support...choose to boot with cd rom support and it should detect the drives and load a standard cd rom driver and assign drive letters.....Now if you are able to do this then your problem is software/driver related and not hardware......let's see what the results are before I give anymore information......

I did as you suggested. I didn't know what to expect, since I have never done this before. It did what you said, up to a point. I chose #2 and it said something about a driver. It never said anything about drive letters. It just sat there. For about 30 minutes. It never did ever boot the rest of the way up with the floppy in. (Was it supposed to?) At any rate, I finally gave up and shut the computer off and removed the floppy. Booted it up and it booted fine. But still no CD or DVD.

 

[doofus125]

I did as you suggested. I didn't know what to expect, since I have never done this before. It did what you said, up to a point. I chose #2 and it said something about a driver. It never said anything about drive letters. It just sat there. For about 30 minutes. It never did ever boot the rest of the way up with the floppy in. (Was it supposed to?) At any rate, I finally gave up and shut the computer off and removed the floppy. Booted it up and it booted fine. But still no CD or DVD.

Sounds like either your cable is bad or you are having major hardware failure.....what are the specs on your system? processor size, pentium/amd? ram?.......have you upgraded any hardware or added anything to your system recently?

 

[cheezit]

Sounds like either your cable is bad or you are having major hardware failure.....what are the specs on your system? processor size, pentium/amd? ram?.......have you upgraded any hardware or added anything to your system recently?

Compaq Presario
Windoze ME
AMD Athlon Processor 1.3 Ghz
256 megs memory
60 gig HD

I haven't added any hardware to the system, other than an external CD-RW that I bought when the internal one started acting up. But I never could get to work correctly. It couldn't see the program that came with it. I took it back to the store and got a refund. But other than that, nothing.

 

[Angel4Truth]

It sounds to me like your ide cable is bad , or you have some currupted drivers within windows itself . I would back up everything when the system is working if you can , or opt to only reinstall the windows drivers themselves if your restore set has that option , if not , restore the computer and see if that fixes the issue , if it doesnt , then you have a bad cable

 

[doofus125]

Compaq Presario
Windoze ME
AMD Athlon Processor 1.3 Ghz
256 megs memory
60 gig HD

I haven't added any hardware to the system, other than an external CD-RW that I bought when the internal one started acting up. But I never could get to work correctly. It couldn't see the program that came with it. I took it back to the store and got a refund. But other than that, nothing.

It sounds to me like your ide cable is bad , or you have some currupted drivers within windows itself . I would back up everything when the system is working if you can , or opt to only reinstall the windows drivers themselves if your restore set has that option , if not , restore the computer and see if that fixes the issue , if it doesnt , then you have a bad cable

You need to open up the case and check your cables....If the boot disk would not load the standard cd rom drivers in dos then the windows drivers are more than likely still there and fine......You don't want to run the system restore if the cd rom drives would not work through Dos either, otherwise your system would not restore because the drive(s) isn't working.....From your description you most definetly have a physical hardware problem and not a driver problem....even if you don't have the specific drivers for your cd drives, a standard driver would work.....Also, check to make sure the jumpers did not fall out of the cd drives....one should be master and the other slave, if they are set to cable select, change them to master and slave and then try to load the system, it doesn't matter which drive is master or slave, just as long as they are both different.....

Also, as for your external drive, you probably needed usb 2.0 ports and I doubt that you had them in that system and that would be why it wouldn't work......even without the driver cd the external drive should have been accessable as just a cd-rom until the drivers were loaded.....