IDE Channels Not Working, Causes Optical Drive Not to Function

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G

Guest

My primary and secondary IDE channels have stopped working making my optical
drive disappear. I have made no hardware changes and everything was working
fine until recently, then it suddenly stopped working. Nothing inside the
case was touched between when everything was working and when it stopped
working.

Windows states it cannot load the drivers (Error 31). I have attempted to
reload the chipset drivers and have done a Repair installation - all to no
avail. I can boot from the optical drive and did so to do the repair.
However, once inside the Windows environment, the Device Manager reports the
two channels with a yellow '?'. The optical drive does not show up in My
Computer and other than allowing to open/close, does nothing.

Windows appears to operate normally and I can boot, logon, and do everything
I want except use the optical drive (SATA HDD).

I have tried uninstalling the channels and having the system reinstall them,
but that does not work.

I am beginning to suspect physical hardware failure.

OS: Win XP Home Ed SP2
Motherboard: Asus K8V SE Deluxe, BIOS v1007, VIA chipset
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST3120026AS
Optical drive: Sony DRU-710A (set to Master on Secondary IDE Channel)
 
Cheapest and easiest way around the failure of IDE slots on the motherboard
is to purchase a Promise IDE card and run the IDE drives from it.

Of course you could get a new motherboard and possibly a new CPU and RAM
and then do a Repair Installation of Windows but if all the rest of the
hardware is working as you want it to right now, the IDE card is quick,
cheap and very time effective.

Something like:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007
 
Do a clean Windows XP installation, either as a parallel installation
in another partition on the SATA disk, or on a spare disk that you can
install in place of the SATA disk. This will tell you if the problem
is with your Windows XP installation or IDE hardware.
 
That's a good idea! Thanks!
--
Scott


Cari (MS-MVP) said:
Cheapest and easiest way around the failure of IDE slots on the motherboard
is to purchase a Promise IDE card and run the IDE drives from it.

Of course you could get a new motherboard and possibly a new CPU and RAM
and then do a Repair Installation of Windows but if all the rest of the
hardware is working as you want it to right now, the IDE card is quick,
cheap and very time effective.

Something like:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102007
Click to expand...
 
Thank you. I have tried all the techniques in the links, but they didn't
work. I did check the BIOS as you recommended and unfortunately the optical
drive is properly detected.
 
That's a good idea too. i think i'm getting motivated just to build the
upgrade to a Vista machine! :-)
 
Scott,

Have you tried using the Add Hardware Wiz to manually locate a driver in the
manufactures list on the HDD or use the ASUS setup disk (have disk option),
to install the Ultra ATA Storage controller driver...?

You might try going to Control Panel, Add Hardware, next, select Yes,
to already connected the hardware, next, scroll down the list and select
"Add
a new hardware device", next, select the (advanced) option, next, select (or
at this point "show all divices")
IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers, next, choose your controller to install or the
have disk option to search the mobo's setup disk..

Or,

"show all devices", next, scroll down the Manufacturer list to "Asus" or
similar,
select it, now in the Model list scroll down and see if you find your
controller,

if it is there select it, next, confirm, click next to install, ok, then
reboot the computer..


Your options may very, no harm to investigate, if you wish to just select
cancel at any time, to exit
the Add Hardware Wiz..

See if you can ID your hardware with the Everest Home ver, your call..

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

Storage:
IDE Controller Intel(R) 82801DB
Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CB
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive Maxtor 6Y200P0 (200
GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Disk Drive Maxtor 6B250R0 (250
GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Optical Drive GENERIC DVD DUAL
4XMax
Optical Drive Memorex 16X-DDL-IN
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

See my quick report summery above.. (cut and pasted)

Just a thought..
Cheers
j;-j
 
Jaymon,

We have a winner!

I tired what you suggested, but the VIA driver I installed using the
procedure didn't work.

So, on a whim I tried Update Driver off the right-clcik menu for the channel
in Device Manager. Using the wizard, I told it not to search, I would specify
the location, then pick from the list. Selecting the Primary IDE Channel
choice, clicked Next, it installed the hardware. Repeated for the secondary.

Thank you very much for the help!
 
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