Faulty CD-Rom?

[ziroi]

After several tests and observations, I've come to the conclusion that something is wrong with my 52x Sony CD-ROM drive. Whenever the light is on, video becomes sluggish, and audio becomes garbled. When the light is off, the video is fine, and the audio is crisp. I've cleaned the lens recently with a "lens cleaner cd", and the same problem persists. I've downloaded the most recent video card drivers, hoping it would clear up the sluggish video, but it hasn't. I am running Windows XP Pro. Am I missing something? Thank you!

ziroi :)

[BipolarBill]

Is this a new problem? Does is happen any time that you use the drive or just when burning?

It sounds like you could use more memory. Which Windows version are we talking about?

Have you scanned for viruses or spyware lately?

www.lavasoft.de

[ziroi]

Well I just noticed what the problem was today. I think it's been going on for a few months now. Whenever I pop in a music CD, and load up Musicmatch or some other player, the CD light is always on, and thus the sounds are always scratchy and garbled, not to mention it plays slower. When I play the game, it screws up visually and audibly whenever the light is on.

I've got Windows XP Pro, but it's only running on 256 MB SDRAM. I've got a little over half free.

I'll check for viruses, and spyware now.

[Baddog]

It sounnds like two programs are trying to access the disk at the same time, you can load the contents of disk on your hard drive and play it from there to see if you have any problem then. Just a suggestion.

[ziroi]

When I play a program that doesn't require a CD, or when I play it from a folder, there is no problem, since there is no CD required. I checked spyware, deleted it, but no improvement. Viruses had been checked for 3 days ago, and this has been going on for longer than that. Would it help if I told you it was an OEM Sony 52x CD-ROM that I bought from googlegear? Maybe there ARE drivers I need to install...

[BipolarBill]

If you're playing a game from CD and it's screwy, you can figure a few things:

1. Bad IDE cable
2. Mis-jumpered drive
3. Bad drive

One other thing - be sure that DMA is enabled in Device Manager. Go to IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Primary and Secondary channels.

[ziroi]

Yep. The DMA wasn't set. All is smooth sailing now. Thanks Bill, I'll make a note of that for the future!

ziroi :t

[BipolarBill]

Amazing...