2 drives... none working!

[DorianGrey]

Hello!

I've got two ide drives the Master is a Samsung Combo CDRW/DVD (sm-348B) and the slave is a Pioneer DVD-ROM DVD116.

When installing certain games now the samsung drives comes up with a CRC error, If I try the same disk in the Pioneer it comes up with a I/O error...

The CD isn't noticably scratched and works on other computers.

Some times I get errors along the line "file doesn't match file in cab" or something like that. when installing other software.

I've checked the plugs on both drives and even changed the cable but to bo avail. The strange thing is that it only affects certain CD.

The two drives were taken from my old computer and put on the new one running with a AMD procesor. seemed to work fine up till a few weeks ago.

Any help would be greatly appriciated.

thanks

 

[Praetor]

I suspect that the problem might not be entirely just the optical drives because the disc works in the other comp and the odds of a simultaneous failure on two drives like that is somewhat slim ... try some other CDs ... if they fail as well then id suggest you have a look at the memory (for ram corruption etc)

 

[DorianGrey]

worth a try!
what would be the best way of testing the RAM then?

 

[Praetor]

You have a have a look at Memtest
http://www.memtest86.com/


Have you had a chance to try other (known to be working) discs?

 

[DorianGrey]

just going to run memtst now.

Try some other disk and two disks (originals) that work on an other computer fail tun run. so it's definatly not the disks!

thanks for the help by the way!

 

[Praetor]

Ok it seems plausible that the memory might be giving you the problems ... other option could be the harddrive (if you were say trying to copy to the drives) or more seriously, the IDE controller

 

[DorianGrey]

Ummm No error found... but why am I thinking that could have been the easy solution?

I get the error every time on two cd that work perfectly on another computer... 3 cd if you include Need for Speed Underground!!
but other cd work ok... that's the wierd thing!

and I've got two HD and have tried on both

 

[Praetor]

Have a look at the ASPI

ASPI, Advanced SCSI Programming Interface, is the source of enough problems with anything even remotely related to an optical drive. Note that Windows2000 and WindowsXP do NOT come with ASPI installed and many users, just starting to do more than basic activities with their drives are encountering problems left and right. ASPI is one of the simplest things to check for -- it just takes one reboot. For more information regarding ASPI see http://cd-rw.org/articles/archive/aspisetup.cfm . IMPORTANT: when checking the version numbers, all four the version numbers have to match identically otherwise the ASPI is not installed correctly/completely regardless of whatever the checker says (this is especially true for Nero's InfoTools which only checks for the presence of the files rather than matching version numbers).

 

[DorianGrey]

Thanks for you help it worked like a charm!

What ever would the forums be without people like you lot!
I have passed on the info to a friend having the same trouble and that leads to a new question about ASPI:
You say that the number most all be indentical what can be done if their not?

anyhow doesn't really matter cause I'm sorted!

Thanks again!

 

[Praetor]

You say that the number most all be indentical what can be done if their not?

Install overtop it will reset the values

here's a guide i wrote a couple months back
www.hazza.dsl.pipex.com/GUIDES/ASPIGuide.pdf