I need some help with CD drives (Vanity)

February 12, 2005

[Howlin]

I put a music CD that came with a book into my computer last night, played, and now my computer won't recognize either my CD or my CD writer.

I've tried everything; Norton, Restore, rebooting.

Does anybody have any suggestions about what I might try now?

[Phsstpok]

Do you see the green tabs on either side of the drives? Those are at the ends of the rails that hold the CDs (or other drives) into the drive bays. Squeezing those should unlock them and then the drives should just slide out. That is, of course, after disconnecting the cables and assumes that her PC has those rails. I don't believe that the picture is actually exactly her model. Pretty likely as it is what they use on almost all of their desktops. It makes the installation process much faster and therefore cheaper for them at the factory.

Neat factory (assembly area is more like it), by the way. Big warehouse like building with doors on one side for the trucks to bring in the various parts, chassis, boards, drives etc. then you have the straight line across the floor with conveyers and rollers where they assemble the systems. Then the burn in racks where they load up the specific software and test the system. Finally straight on to the other side of the building (after packing) and out another set of doors to the trucks that take the PCs off for shipping.

[Magnolia]

Well guys...do we need to send out a search party for Howlin? Maybe she went in and forgot to leave the bread crumbs to find her way
out! ; D

[Howlin]

Well, unless I did it wrong, the chip set thing didn't work.

*Sigh*

This is what my CPU looks like:

The little dent is right in the middle, where it turns to the "right."

[Howlin]

I'm back, Mag!

[Magnolia]

Whew..I was beginning to get concerned. Maybe we should set up that PayPal thingy for a fund raiser now? LOL!

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Should be about 10:30 back there in NC (I think that is where she is ) and some Grandkids probably wanted some attention from their grandmother as they go nighty night!!!!!

[SeaBiscuit]

"I have several motherboards that don't seem to work, I think I must have done them in...."

Maybe.. but it could be a number of things that makes a mobo not boot up after a build, mostly it's just a poorly socketed memory stick, video card or a short somewhere. It's so easy to overlook something and think you have a dead mobo.

[Cold Heat]

Try the drive disconnect idea, one at a time if you have not. There is some risk putting the connector back on, but if you feel froggy, it is all that is left.

[Revel]

I have seen some weird stuff before. I built a computer for someone once with Asus mother board(A7V133) with a Via chipset. Part of the build was a 2977 hardware modem made by USR(3 COM). It worked fine for a couple of years and sudden the mother board did not even see it. Tried reseating it. Even forced the bios to redetect all the devices and it still did not see. Installed a slightly different version of the modem (2976) and it worked for ever after. Put the 2977 in my computer and worked like a champ for ever after. Go figure. For that and other reasons I stay away from these modern via chipsets. They are too flakey.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That is YOUR Machine eh???

Good looking box...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Try the drive disconnect idea, one at a time if you have not

HOLD EVERYTHING!!!

Lets get some decent instructions going....

[SeaBiscuit]

You may have pinched the cable when you closed it up. Do you have another cable? If not you could test by taking the cable off the hardrive and put it on the cd, then boot up with the xp install cd, providing your bios is set to boot from cd, most likely it is if the pc has been made within the last few years. Then if the cd drive works, you will know to go buy another cable.

[Cold Heat]

Looks like her cds are nicely exposed.

she could run the test with the box open.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

OK, I see what you are saying,,,but lets have her disconnect the slave drive with the current cable first....or do we have to change the pin to cable select? In which case we should try the cable replace first....

we'll need instructions for notches on the plugin then..........

[Howlin]

I've never opened it before; just now was the first time it's been opened.

My husband wondered if it might have been laying against the green "dome" thing on the left side somehow.

[Revel]

I can see from your picture that the Primary Cable which is connected to your hard drive does have an empty connector for a Slave device. But it will never reach your CD rom drives. So after you try disconnecting the CD drives I am out of ideas that you would be able to do on your own. Others may have more answers though. I am not sure you would feel comfortable changing the jumpers on one of the CD drives to be a slave anyways. And I am sure you don't want to get into removing the CD drives and loosely laying them near the hard drive where there is a risk of shorts in the computer if it were not done very carefully. So If isolating the drive does not work then you might want to find someone who does this stuff a lot.

[Phsstpok]

OK, I moved on from actually getting into the box several years ago, so it's been awhile, but the next step I would take is to disconnect the drive at the end of the ribbon cable. Just pull (gently) straight back on the orange plastic, that's what it's there for, to make disconnecting easier.

After doing that, without changing anything else, button back up and boot. Then look for the bang.

If it's gone you've likely got your defective drive in the one you disconnected. If it's not gone then reconnect the first drive and disconnect the other one and repeat the check.

Here's where my memory is uncertain. Used to be that you had to specific a "master" and a "slave" by setting the jumpers on the drive (usually right near where the cable connects). It's possible that the test I described won't work without either adjusting those jumpers or changing which connector the lone drive is connected to on the ribbon. It's just been too long. I'd need to go back and look it up to be confident.

This is where the Dell help line might actually come in handy.

I've mentioned on a couple of threads today that I've had several eye operations. The only reason that is germane is that it is now time for me to remove my contact lenses and I literally can't read the computer screen when I take them out (glasses do zero for me, except reading glasses when I've got the contacts in). I'm going to have to drop out before you get this resolved.

I'll check the thread in the morning to see if you've gotten this fixed. If it's still down on Monday I'll get our on site Dell tech (called an SE, for Systems Engineer) to see if she can give us something else to try. I'm also going to continue to research the CD as a possible source of damage.

and you did check for the crayon in the drive, didn't you?

Best of luck.

[Cold Heat]

All that is needed is to mark on side of the cable so that orientation is maintained. I like to always mark the right. Most cables already have orientation marks.

[SeaBiscuit]

I agree, the Via chipsets can be troublesome, they were notorious to have problems with a SBLive soundcard. But I use them often because I stick with AMD cpu's. Yep, computers can be wierd, as if there are gremlins inside. ;-)

[Howlin]

You mean open the case and leave everything connected?