i have a similar problem. at present i have a packard bell with two dvd
writers. a short while back drive F (slave) stopped reading audio cd's and
cdroms but will read dvd's.
switched the jumpers on the drives but still had the same problem. bought a
new drive and have tried all combinations of jumpers,cables and power input.
have flashed the drives with latest firmware and am now in the process of
tearing out what little hair i have left.
master drive is a brand new, installed today, optiarc dvd rw ad 5200a and
the slave drive is an original installation nec dvd rw nd 3540a, the drive i
removed is a philips dvd 8701/67.
it was working fine up to last week then phut. i have even tried disabling
each drive in turn and checking but it seems that the slave drive is the one
affected.
when i check the properties it just says that the device is working
correctly and the troubleshooter is more trouble than it is worth, so any
ideas an what to do next, apart from trade in this pc for a mac?
final thought is that i may need to re-install the drivers for xp but cannot
find them on the microsoft website anywhere.will have to see if i can find an
xp disk with them on.