DVD - CD device conflict

[Citizen Bob]

I am running Win2K/SP4. There are two hard disks on IDE Channel 0, an
NEC 3540 DVD burner on IDE Channel 1 Master. If I put an LG CD burner
on IDE Channel 1 Slave, the system won't boot. If I take the DVD drive
off and put the CD burner on Master, it will boot properly. Clearly I
am having some kind of device conflict.

All IDE devices are set for Cable Select and use the latest 80-wire
ATA133 Cable Select ribbon cables.

How do I resolve this device conflict?


--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[beenthere]

I am running Win2K/SP4. There are two hard disks on IDE Channel 0, an
NEC 3540 DVD burner on IDE Channel 1 Master. If I put an LG CD burner
on IDE Channel 1 Slave, the system won't boot. If I take the DVD drive
off and put the CD burner on Master, it will boot properly. Clearly I
am having some kind of device conflict.

All IDE devices are set for Cable Select and use the latest 80-wire
ATA133 Cable Select ribbon cables.

How do I resolve this device conflict?

Make the opticals Master and slave.

 

[Citizen Bob]

Make the opticals Master and slave.

The BIOS sorts them out correctly on POST when they are set for CS.

The conflict occurs when Win2K tries to load and execute. It seems to
think that the devices are identical, which means I need to find a way
to make Win2K think they are different, which they are.

But I am willing to try anything. In the meantime any other comments
would be appreciated.



--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[beenthere]

The BIOS sorts them out correctly on POST when they are set for CS.

The conflict occurs when Win2K tries to load and execute. It seems to
think that the devices are identical, which means I need to find a way
to make Win2K think they are different, which they are.

But I am willing to try anything. In the meantime any other comments
would be appreciated.

So the BIOS sees them, and Win2K can`t tell the difference.

 

[Citizen Bob]

So the BIOS sees them, and Win2K can`t tell the difference.

It would seem so.

In that case what do you suggest I do to get Win2K to distinguish
them? I tried uninstalling all optical disc device drivers but that
didn't work. Maybe it wasn't enough.



--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[beenthere]

It would seem so.

In that case what do you suggest I do to get Win2K to distinguish
them? I tried uninstalling all optical disc device drivers but that
didn't work. Maybe it wasn't enough.

Try one by itself, then try the other by itself.
If each works OK, try Master and Slave.

 

[jaster]

It would seem so.

In that case what do you suggest I do to get Win2K to distinguish them? I
tried uninstalling all optical disc device drivers but that didn't work.
Maybe it wasn't enough.

Will it boot if you put the CD as Master and DVD as slave?

Doesn't make a difference to the bios if there's a CD it will boot the CD
or if there's no CD but a DVD it will boot the DVD.

 

[Citizen Bob]

Try one by itself, then try the other by itself.
If each works OK, try Master and Slave.

Both work by themselves.

I will try Master/Slave although I do not understand why it will make
any difference.


--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[kony]

I am running Win2K/SP4.

A normal Win2k SP4, or one that has been upgraded from NT4
many years ago and now is in an unknown state?

If the latter, it is very important to mention this because
you would then have more variables involved than a normal,
let alone clean, Win2k SP4 installation.

The BIOS sorts them out correctly on POST when they are set for CS.

While this is interesting, it in no way shape or form means
"just ignore what someone else suggested".
They were not asking you to think about it, rather to TRY
it.

The conflict occurs when Win2K tries to load and execute.

No point in considering it if you're not trying other jumper
settings yet. If those jumpers don't help, try putting the
other drive at the end of the cable in CS, then in jumpered
mode.

It seems to
think that the devices are identical,

Based on what? Nothing you have written suggests this, BUT
it could be that their logical master/slave relationship
isn't right.

which means I need to find a way
to make Win2K think they are different, which they are.

No, Win2k can distinguish two different drives as different,
except perhaps if they had exact same firmware, but even
then, it can use two drives with same firmware too. That
doesn't mean it can resolve other hardware problems.

But I am willing to try anything. In the meantime any other comments
would be appreciated.

ANYTHING?

Ok then, do a clean install of Win2k SP4 so we don't have to
wonder if you have wierd problems unrelated to merely having
two drives and win2k.

 

[kony]

Both work by themselves.

I will try Master/Slave although I do not understand why it will make
any difference.

As always you need to try things to find a fault before it
can be understood. If all faults were understood ahead of
time, they wouldn't exist, now.

 

[Citizen Bob]

Ok then, do a clean install of Win2k SP4 so we don't have to
wonder if you have wierd problems unrelated to merely having
two drives and win2k.

You do not understand just how much I have loaded over the years.
Rebuilding my system would be a nightmare. The Programs directory
under Start Menu has 78 entries. And that is after I clean out all the
apps I do not use. However I do have all the apps saved in an archive,
so at least I could rebuild if necessary.

Another thing you do not understand is that I want to find out what is
going wrong. If I throw in the towel and rebuild, then I am no better
off with NT technology than in the days of Win3.1, where you had to
rebuild every 6 months.

I currently suspect the problem of corrupt NTFS file system is when it
shuts down. For some reason, when I shut down, the system never
actually shuts down, but reboots as though I told it to restart. To
test this hypothesis, I am going to do a warm reboot (push the reboot
buton on the front of the computer) instead of going thru the Win2K
shutdown procedure. You would think that this would cause problems,
but if it prevents corrupting the file system, then I may be on to
something.

I do plan on doing an IPU one day to see what would happen.


--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[Citizen Bob]

A normal Win2k SP4, or one that has been upgraded from NT4
many years ago and now is in an unknown state?

When I first commissioned this system, I installed the EnerMax
DynaBacker RAID box. It is long gone since it did not work properly.

Is it possible that the installation software wrote to the BIOS and
told it to be in a RAID mode, or something else like that. Where do I
look in the Phoenix Award BIOS to find out about this?

Here's another thing I do not understand. If I run the Win2K Defragger
I have two entries per disk. I have the one labeled C: System (my
choice of label) and another one labeled C: only. I run Perfect Disk
which allows me to look at the Registry key for each device and they
are different for C: System and C:. The same is true for D: Backup and
D: entries.

Why are there apparently 2 device drivers associated with each drive?
I never saw this before I built this particular system.




--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[beenthere]

When I first commissioned this system, I installed the EnerMax
DynaBacker RAID box. It is long gone since it did not work properly.

Is it possible that the installation software wrote to the BIOS and
told it to be in a RAID mode, or something else like that. Where do I
look in the Phoenix Award BIOS to find out about this?

Here's another thing I do not understand. If I run the Win2K Defragger
I have two entries per disk. I have the one labeled C: System (my
choice of label) and another one labeled C: only. I run Perfect Disk
which allows me to look at the Registry key for each device and they
are different for C: System and C:. The same is true for D: Backup and
D: entries.

Why are there apparently 2 device drivers associated with each drive?
I never saw this before I built this particular system.

You`ve got something weird about this machine CB.
D\load and install CCleaner.
www.ccleaner.com/download/
It`s free, and very good.
There is an option to analyse your Registry, as well as clean up all
the Cr*p on you computer.
READ CAREFULLY befor you tick any boxes, but you can Analyse
before you clean, and that`s good.
HTH.

 

[Citizen Bob]

You`ve got something weird about this machine CB.

Indeed. And now I have become obsessed with finding it. I have
captured the CHKDSK output and posted it in hopes that someone could
figure out what is going on, but no one has thus far.

D\load and install CCleaner.
www.ccleaner.com/download/
It`s free, and very good.
There is an option to analyse your Registry, as well as clean up all
the Cr*p on you computer.
READ CAREFULLY befor you tick any boxes, but you can Analyse
before you clean, and that`s good.

I used one of those once and it obliterated my OS. Fortunately I had a
clone backup.

I will take a look, maybe this one is a bit tamer.

--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[kony]

You do not understand just how much I have loaded over the years.

That is precisely why a clean install might be important.
I never suggested merely formatting your drive to loose
everything! Rather, a clean install plus drivers takes
under one hour, most of that is even unattended time. THEN
you have a baseline for what Win2k would normally do, versus
what it does with all these old
upgrade/migration/clutter/software/etc issues.

Rebuilding my system would be a nightmare.

Having to guess whether your OS is working properly isn't an
ideal place to be either.

 

[Citizen Bob]

That is precisely why a clean install might be important.
I never suggested merely formatting your drive to loose
everything! Rather, a clean install plus drivers takes
under one hour, most of that is even unattended time. THEN
you have a baseline for what Win2k would normally do, versus
what it does with all these old
upgrade/migration/clutter/software/etc issues.

Having to guess whether your OS is working properly isn't an
ideal place to be either.

I know all this, but I am too curious to figure out what is happening.

How do I find out if that DynaBacker screwed things up by installing
RAID or multiple drivers?


--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[Citizen Bob]

That is precisely why a clean install might be important.
I never suggested merely formatting your drive to loose
everything! Rather, a clean install plus drivers takes
under one hour, most of that is even unattended time. THEN
you have a baseline for what Win2k would normally do, versus
what it does with all these old
upgrade/migration/clutter/software/etc issues.

I am planning to do an InPlace Upgrade. But my NEC 3550 stops running
during the install (it goes into standby) and the Win2K installation
disk is not configured to restart when it comes time. So I put the LG
DVD drive in and it responds when it comes time for the IPU to
continue.

My question to you and the others is this: Does the IPU clean out the
crap in the Registry? IOW, is it as effective as a clean install?


--

Govt is an insult to human dignity. With or without govt,
you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil
things, that takes govt. Govt is the root of all evil.

 

[kony]

I am planning to do an InPlace Upgrade.

I wish you luck but my advice still stands- don't guess
about this installation any more, do a clean Win2k SP4
installation and see if the problem persists BEFORE adding
anything to it.

There is no reason to think another inplace upgrade is the
answer, as Win2k /Sp4 itself doesn't have this problem you
suggested- just your system's particular OS installation or
hardware.