[Qualitysnob]

I've used an old Toshiba DVD-rom drive in my HTPC for some time without any trouble. Recently I installed a DVD-burner as the new master (secondary IDE) and slaved my Toshiba. I can no longer play DVDs with the Toshiba. The video plays very slowly and the audio drops out repeatedly. No problems with the burner. Any ideas?

 

[nm88]

First checck your cabling. You should be using an 80-conductor IDE cable (with thin-looking conductors, not the older thick type). It should be up to 18" long. If both drives support cable select, you should try that first, not manual master/slave configuration. If cable select doesn't work, you can do it manually by jumpers, but put the master at the end of the cable and the slave in the middle of the cable. If you still have problems, try swapping the master/slave positions of the drives, and also try another cable.


You didn't specify your operating system, but assuming you are using Windows 2000 or XP, go to control panel and the IDE controller settings and make sure both drives are set for DMA access, not PIO access.

 

[OmicronOmega]

I think that some DVD drives have problems when set as slaves. Check your documnetation.

 

[Qualitysnob]

Now I remember! A long time ago I slaved that DVD-rom and it didn't work properly. I checked the IDE controller and I couldn't set it to DMA; it was stuck on PIO. So I put in an 80-pin ribbon and made the old DVD-rom the master and the DVD-burner the slave and now everything is happy. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Qualitysnob]

Ok, I need more help. The problem was solved until I rebooted. Now that drive has gone back to PIO and I can't change it to DMA. If I swap slave and master again, I think I can change it to DMA, but only for 1 boot. After that, it reverts back to PIO. What gives?

 

[Axel]

You could try to delete your IDE ATA Controllers in the Device Manager and let them install themselves.

____

Axel

 

[Qualitysnob]

I have uninstalled the secondary IDE channel, and when it attempts to re-install the driver, it finds a device called hdc in addition to the secondary IDE channel. It attempts to install the driver for hdc and fails, so I end up with an unidentified device where my secondary IDE should be. The only way I could fix the problem was system restore, which means I'm right where I started. Perhaps I'm skipping a step in this process?

 

[Qualitysnob]

I worked around the hdc problem by disabling it (not uninstalling) and then rebooting. After reboot, the secondary IDE channel appears (disabled) in place of the unidentified device so I just re-enable it and everything is peachy. I don't understand why it does that, but I have my DVD drive back (for the time being )


If it keeps doing this, I guess I'll have no choice but to buy a new DVD-rom.