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General discussion

Computer being weird

Mar 27, 2004 9:45AM PST

My uncle gave me a computer to fix and im stumped. He put in a new cd-burner. Whenever windows xp pro loads it says the driver for the cd-burner will cause it and the other dvd player to not work.If you look in my computer, no dvd player or cd burner is listed. I entered BIOS and they are both being detected. I then unhooked the IDE Cable and power connector, now when the computer starts it says to put in a boot disk and then says the processor is running at an incorrect speed and it may cause it to hang. If i connect the cd burner and then disconnect the dvd-rom, it boots up like it did before, it lists the cd-burner in BIOS as being detected, but wont show up when windows loads. I tried booting up in safe mode also. Same results. Any ideas? I was going to try whipping out the Hard drive and loading a new image, but If thats not the problem i dont want to go through the hassle of backing their files up.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Computer being weird
Mar 27, 2004 8:38PM PST
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Re:Computer being weird
Mar 27, 2004 8:59PM PST

This sounds like a misplaced IDE cable. Double check your connections, use a new 80 wire IDE cable, and reset the Bios to its defaults.

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Re:Re:Computer being weird
Mar 29, 2004 8:40AM PST

that didnt do the trick, same results. any more ideas?

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Re:Re:Re:Computer being weird
Mar 29, 2004 11:20AM PST

OK, try this:

Using a 80-connector cable. make sure the master is on the end of cable and the slave in the middle, check results. If not using master/slave configuartion, try the CSL arrangement. Make sure both devices are setup physically like master/slave on cable but the jumpers are set to CSL on each device, check results. Verify under the bios you use "auto" setting rather than CD if applicable so the system selects it better. If it still doesn't work maybe the h/w is at fault like a cable or cable ordination is wrong, verify. Those are immediate areas to look at. -----Willy Happy

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Re:Re:Re:Re:Computer being weird
Mar 30, 2004 9:03AM PST

i did the slave and master setup along with the cable select setup. If i do cable select it wont boot still. It says the burner software is going to make windows unstable. I can't find where they installed it so im going to whipe the Hard drive, by the way, what is the h/w?

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Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Computer being weird
Mar 30, 2004 9:32AM PST

h/w = hardware also s/w = software

You can't remove the installed s/w for the burner? I suggest you physically leave it off, i believe you mentioned you were able to boot then. If so, then look under the add/remove in the control panel -OR- if the burner pgm. has its own *uninstall* rountine, use it. Then reboot w/o burner allow it finish, then shutdown, add burner CD drive, allow it boot if it can. If it does then install the required s/w. I suggest you look for any burner pgm. patches, fixes, etc. beforehand that may address your problem at thier support website. With XP, you can use the default MS version just to see if it works.

good luck -----Willy

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Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Computer being weird
Mar 31, 2004 12:05AM PST

I have removed the burner physically and that causes the maching not to boot. Im thinking of just re-installing windows at this point. I know what they want backed up so im going to stick an extra hd in there and save it, that or use their zip drive to back it all up. If you have any more suggestions keep throwing them at me. Thanks for the help!

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Re:Computer being weird
Mar 31, 2004 4:05AM PST

Sounds like when you disconnect the cd player your also disconnecting the bootable hard drive (?)
"I then unhooked the IDE Cable and power connector, now when the computer starts it says to put in a boot disk"
The puter should boot without a cd drive connected.
Check your cabling and jumpers:
Assuming you have one HD,one CD drive and one burner, the coonection will work like this:
>bootable hard drive as Primary Master
>CD drive as Primary slave
>burner as Secondary Master
Master drives connect to the end of the ribbon cable, Slaves connect on the middle of the cable.
Check the BIOS settings after checking cabling and jumpers, make sure the bootable HD is set first in line to boot.
Reloading XP probably wont help if hardware connections are wrong.