minor burner woes (hopefully)

[draboo]

finished install sucessfully. rw works great,only took about 30 sec to record 5 good sized pics. anyway,my cdrom wont work. looked in device manager and both rom and rw are listed(rw=master and rom=slave,according to manual) i get a message when trying to use rom of: E;/ is not accessible device is not ready] the rw will work for viewing the cd i burnt,but would like to get rom working also. would switching them around(slave and master settings)cure this? thanks in advance checked device manager again and it said that both rw and rom are working properly. humph
bummedbrad :confused:

[Explorer]

Does your CD-ROM not work with any CDs at all or just with burned disks?

I run into this problem frequently with my customers and a couple of things can cause the problem you describe. The most common being an incomplete understanding of the burning process and how CDs are read by drives. (My exact problem when I first started using burners).

First, assuming you are using a CD-R disk (CD recordable) it seems likely that you did not use the option to make the disk readable in a standard CD-ROM drive when you finished the burn process. If you do not use this option, the disk will be readable in a CD-RW drive (burner) but not in a standard CD-ROM drive. A check in the help files of your burner software should explain this and how to overcome your problem.

Second, if you used a CD-RW disk (rewritable), it's unlikely you will be able to read it in a standard CD-ROM drive. However, this is dependant on the burner, it's software, and the CD-ROM drive. Sometimes it works, depending on the above, and sometimes it doesn't.

If you can read a normal (not burned) CD in your CD-ROM drive but not burned disks then you can be fairly sure your CD-ROM drive is OK and one of the problems mentioned above is the culprit.

Having said all of the above, some (mostly older) CD-ROM drives will not read a burned disk no matter what you do.

Hope this has helped clarify things for you. Let us know.

[draboo]

update: under my computer,i have a e and an f drive listed,both listed as cdrom drives. the e drive is the only icon that i can clickon to get either of the drives to work,clicking of f gives me a messge of drive is not ready. so, i guess both drives DO work,tho if i ever want to fast copy from one to the other,i am sol. even tho the drives are on the same cable,shouldnt they work sepereatly,like the two hard drives i have? the hds are on the same cable as the disk drives and they work independently using their own drive letter in my computer. thanks for your help,explorer. am a slow learner.
update update: dunno why,gave up asking that a long time ago.but now,outa the blue,the e drive letter fires up the rw and now,all of a sudden,the f drive letter now tickles the rom drive. the rom does read a burned disk. i have no idea what happened other than the BIG GUY UPSTAIRS is creating a sitcom here in the great white north!mucho gracious again,explorer!!!!

[Explorer]

A small, but important, item I don't think I mentioned before. If you don't have a CD in the drive it will generate a drive not ready error because there's nothing there to read.

Glad to hear things worked out for you.