What would make a CD burner not work ?

[blues90]

I realize there are a thousand reasons since I did some google searches.

I have a dell dimension XPS R-450 and It is used and running 2000 with the SP4 for end users and I have all the latest updates I could find .

I did have it working well the other day ,I added a CD ROM drive and it had a CD RW burner that came with it .

Once I had all the updates I added the second drive and both wirked perfect I even found a free burner package and it worked where I could burn backups .

I wnt on a few sites without incident then one site I went on kicked up a warning telling me while i was trying to post the message came up , I looked at it and it said i did not have the latest version of IE , well the next up is 7 and 2000 does not support that .

It shut off that site and then once this happened I could not shutdown the computer in the normal fashion .

Instead of going through all the testing and so on I did a re- formate and clean install of 2000 pro with the burned updates but when I attempted to do this I use the burner drive as always byt it would not work , I had to use the added in CD ROM driv to get the re-formate and updates in the computer .

It see's the drive and it says it works but it won't .

I tried a memorex burner I had and got the same thing .

I did not even see either burner when I looked in my computer but they were in the my devices and both had drivers .

I did have trouble with the memorex in my old computer . Is it possible for a drive to suddenly die?

What I tried was just the original burner without the added CR ROM and nothing , then I swapped positions for the drives in the tower so i could allow the ribbon cable to reach the drives in theri new positions , then I saw both drives in my computer menue but the burner does nothing ,it keeps telling me to insert a disc and there is one in there. The rest works fine , I can go online and the CD ROM Plays music through windows media player 9 as both drives did before the screw up going on the one site I was always able to access .

Any ideas?

[Gore1FL]

1. Check the updates from MS

Use custom instead of express and see if you missed anything. (If you did, repeat the update until there are none)

Go to the hardware vendor's website and see if there are drivers you are missing.

Windows often makes a "best guess" when it finds unidentified hardware, and often it is wrong.


did you look in device manager under system in the control panel?

[Duer 157099]

2. This is just a long shot, but

google "fixcd.reg" and follow some links and see if that solution might apply?

Here's one such:

http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/494352-please-help.html

Let us know.

Similar things have happened to me so many times over the years, but I never know what caused or solved it, lol

Good luck!

If it does not work, post back with more details.

[blues90]

5. I called the manufacturer , described the problem

It is a LG burner . He told me I probably lost the firmware that runs a chip in the drive and there is no way to get it back . I got another burner same brand and installed it per the dell online owners manual which said to connect the EIDE which for the CD drives allows two drives on the prim IDE and two on the secondary IED. The burners are on the secondary and the pentII mother board said to set the jumper on both the drives to the cable select and not master and slave . I did that and the new burner works perfect .

In my old computer I had the memorex burner and set it to master and the CD ROM to slave but the memorex drive would burn but would never see a inserted disk and start the disk once the drawer was closed , never did bother to figure out why and tht buurner died , all I was able to do was copy CD music and it used NERO . this new drive came with NERO 7 the memorex came with NERO 4 . I don't like NERO it is difficult to follow the instructions . I did find a free burner program online and it did work for the LG burner that lost the firmware . The fellow at dell said I could get the firmware back so when time allows I will try this .

The online burner I used was Express Burn by NCH software , and it did work and was easy to follow but I don't know if it caused the burner to crash or if it was the site I always went to that kicked up a windows warning that told me I did have the latest IE , I have IE 6 for 2000 PRO . If I closed that warning it would close the site , this happened twice and each time I could not shutdown the dell off from the start menue , the second time the drive died . Who knows why .

[canetoad]

3. Left field thought...

can your power supply handle two burners? Probably not an issue if they were working at some stage.

I've seen this happen often. I don't believe the updates are where you should be looking; XP has generic CD drivers that I've found to be pretty reliable. If you are at the stage where you can see the drives in My Computer, I'd be trying different burning software. Nero for one is notorious for not seeing devices.

Have a look at Deep Burner free version http://www.deepburner.com/ In my experience, this program has always located the drives when other burning proggies have not.

[blues90]

4. Yes I can handle two devices such as

Two burners on one ribbon wire and on the other two devices like hard drives or CD burners . I had the two on one ribbon cable off one section of the mother board and the hard drive off the other , floppy is on it's own smaller . Both CD drive are to be set on cable not master and slave and I did have them working .

I called the support line for the LG burner and he said window 2000 should find a driver so It at least works as a ROM then he said it could have lost it's chip F- something and there is no way to get that back .

I ordered the same brand cheap online and see what gives when that gets here.

It shows in my computer and in the device manager and i can eject the drawer on my properties but the drive does not see a dick in the drive.