ASUS A7V no likey the cd

[koonthul]

:confused:

The optical drive I have plugged into my system does not show up in Win 2k but works fine and shows up fine in Bios and DOS.

So this one has me stumped, but before I go further, here are the pieces to the puzzle.

ASUS A7V Motherboard rev. 1.02
Mitsumi CD-R drive CR-4801te
2 physical maxtor drives, one 60 gig, one 80 gig
Radeon 9800 Pro
800 MHZ Athlon CPU
3x 128 meg ram PC133
300 watt antec PSU

LOTS of periph cards including
firewire card, tv tuner card, sound card, LAN card (4 out of 5 pci slots used)

So, the physical drives are both on Primary IDE chan 1 and 2 (the 80 gig is slave)
The optical drive is on secondary IDE as master (jumpers are set as so).

The STRANGE thing is, the drive shows up in BIOS fine, no problems. Also allows me to run Win2K from cd after initial boot and get to all the fun setup options (format, windows setup, etc) so the drive is functioning fine. Then i get into windows, and it's like it doesn't exist! No errors, no problems, device manager is fine, no strange behavior, nada...no cd-rom drive! The only thing I can think of is to start yanking PCI cards out. I don't really understand why this would cause a problem though because if its an IRQ or DMA thing, wouldn't windows go nuts and say something? Weirdsville.

Some more history: The drive was in an earlier setup, but I recently changed out the motherboard, RAM and proc for the above setup (faster).

I also replaced the PSU to a higher power (250 watt to 300 watt) because of the Radeon. Before the replacement, I still wasn't seeing the drive.

Thanks for the help!

[koonthul]

Just yanked all the extra PCI cards and the extra hard drive out. Still the same thing, shows up fine in BIOS/DOS...no where to be found in windows 2k. :(

Ugh.

[AllGamer]

it is not a mobo problem

more like Windows can not see the CDR

that mitsumi brand is known to have weird issues.

Try finding some drivers for that mitsumi CDR

[koonthul]

Thats just it, there aren't any...and never were. Both versions of Windows (Xp and 2k) always found the drive. The only thing I changed between the time it worked and the time it hasn't was the motherboard and proc. The only thing I haven't looked into is a FLASH for the drive itself (update). I'll check into that, but I'm still stumped. You are right though, the Mitsumi line (especially this model) has always been flaky. :mad:

[koonthul]

The plot sickens... :eek:

So, I decided to remove the Mitsumi Optical drive from the machine and test it in a different computer entirely to make sure it was okay. Drive checks out fine and runs both in dos and windows. Now granted, the new test machine was WinXP, but just to clarify, no drivers needed to be installed and no hassles or problems with the drive came up. It just worked.

Being curious, I decided to remove a known good drive (DVD reader) from this WinXP machine and put it into the problem child computer to see what would happen. Basically, the same problem occured. This new drive could be seen in DOS fine, but once windows loaded, it did not show up in My computer or anywhere else. The drive is perfectly fine and requires no drivers either.

Soooooo, my last check was the drive cable itself. I swapped it out for a different one, made sure it was firmly seated and tried it again...still no luck.

Could I have a bad IDE port on the mobo? If this is the case, why would it work in DOS? My next check is to try and place the optical on slave on IDE chan 1. Any other ideas before I try this?

In the words of a holographic princess...

"Help me sysopt.com, you're my only hope!"

[AllGamer]

yes it could be a cable issue.

and yes you should also try the 2nd IDE port with another cable

[G Ray88]

Are you using a Master, Slave setup with the CD or using cable select. The manual that came with the MB should help you with using cable select. Good Luck :)

[koonthul]

So I just placed the cdrom drive on the primary IDE channel as slave and it works fine. I think this is in fact a cable issue, but not one I would expect. for some reason, I think that windows only likes the 80 wire ribbon cable and not the 40 wire. The only difference between the setups is that I was using a 40 wire on the secondary IDE channel, instead of an 80 wire like on the first channel. I'm going to grab another 80 wire and give it a shot again...

[Strawbs]

If I were you I would upgrade that PSU before it blows & takes something else with it! You have so many peripherals that 300watter must be under constant strain to keep everything powered..

[koonthul]

Strawbs - the psu is fine, it's an antec. but I'll consider that for the future...

anyway, I'm a moron and always forget to check the simple things. A note to everyone who buys computer parts second hand...Never trust what the seller says, ever.

To make a long story short, the bios needed updating...badly. I had originally asked the original owner about this and he claimed that he had updated. BULL SPIT. I was using something so outdated it was laughable. Now that I flashed it, things seem to be working just fine, IDE ports show up and all my drives are there.

On another note, I'm tracking down a nasty BSOD. I think it's most likely a bad RAM module as one of the three came from this "seller" guy. To troubleshoot this problem, I went here first...

http://forums.techguy.org/t406960.html

Out of that post, what is totally cool is this!

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp#top

I highly recommend anyone who is a computer fixer-upper to have that little gem in their toolbox. Microsoft actually made a useful tool for a change! This little memory tester is tight. I have both a bootable cd and floppy in my toolkit. Free. Enjoy and thanks for letting me bounce my problems off of all of you!

[02gsxr]

I would also say you need to be careful with that power supply!! Computer PSU's have very large electrolytic capacitors in them which help stabilize the voltage and add a "reserve" power source during heavy load times. If you pass too much power through an electrolytic cap. they can violently explode!! I have seen this happen on a few people's computers, sometimes enough to blow chunks of metal through the case!

Here is from the "PSU Calculator":

CPU:

AMD Athlon 500-750Mhz [35W]
AMD Athlon 800-850Mhz [45W]
AMD Athlon 900-950Mhz [55W]

Video Card:


ATI Radeon 9700/9800 [54W]
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro/XT [68W]
ATI Radeon X800 [56W]

Memory:

3 Sticks PC66/100 [21W]
3 Sticks PC133 [36W]
3 Sticks DDR [30W]
3 Sticks DDR2 [22.5W]

Optical Drive #1

CD-Rom [20W]
CD-RW [20W]
DVD-Rom [25W]
DVD-RW [25W]
DVD/CD-RW Combo [30W]

Optical Drive #2

Same as above

PCI Cards:

56k PCI Modem [4W]
PCI Network Card [4W]
PCI Wireless NIC [7W]
SoundBlaster [7W]
SoundBlaster Live/Audigy [18W]
PCI SCSI/Firewire Card [25W]
Additional Card #1 [5W] (Avg)
Additional Card #2 [5W] (Avg)
Additional Card #3 [5W] (Avg)

External Devices:

USB 1.1/2.0 #1 [5W]
USB 1.1/2.0 #2 [5W]
USB 1.1/2.0 #3 [5W]
1394 (Firewire) #1 [8W]
1394 (Firewire) #2 [8W]

Accessories:

60/80/120mm Fan #1 [2W]
60/80/120mm Fan #2 [2W]
60/80/120mm Fan #3 [2W]
60/80/120mm Fan #4 [2W]
60/80/120mm Fan #5 [2W]
Lighted Fan #1 [3W]
Lighted Fan #2 [3W]
Lighted Fan #3 [3W]
Lighted Fan #4 [3W]
Lighted Fan #5 [3W]
Cold Cathode #1 [3W]
Cold Cathode #2 [3W]
Multi Card Reader [10W]

With the devices you have listed, you have a constant draw of 337W! However, this is only a figure at normal use, During heavy system load (peak) you should add another 30% which would be 438W.

Even though you have an Antec, you should really consider upgrading! Antec is great and accurately rates their PSU's, but they are not bulletproof. Right now you can get an excellent Enermax Noisetaker 420W or 470W for only $50-80!