DVD drive acting very strangely...

C

Cray-Z

New Member
I'm messing around with this motherboard my dad had RMA'd to see if I can turn it into a usuable computer.

Works fine but the one thing that's got me perplexed is the DVD drives plugged into it.

The DVD writer seems to "read when it wants to", which is really weird. A lot of the time, it just won't read anything but sometimes it does read discs (I even burnt a disc using it). The drive is there in Windows Explorer and the BIOS also catches it but I can't get it to boot from the DVD drive (but it DID boot once so I managed to install Windows from it). In Windows I put discs in and it makes no attempt to read them...unless it suddenly WANTS to read them and then does.

Does this make any sense? A drive almost literally reading discs when it feels like it wants to read them.

The motherboard is an ASUS P5N-E SLI board.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ and Intel Dual Core T2130
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte M61-P S3
    Memory
    3GB DDR2 800 by Corsair (desktop), 2GB DDR2 800 (laptop)
    Graphics Card(s)
    512MB ATi Radeon HD 4850, 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7600
    Sound Card
    Realtek Integrated HD Audio (both)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    21.5" Acer H213H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x800
    Hard Drives
    250GB Western Digital SATA, 7200 RPM
    320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2, 7200 RPM

    80GB Toshiba Notebook SATA, 7200 RPM
    PSU
    Compucase 585w
    Case
    VAV-something (cheapie neon case, nothing special)
    Cooling
    (Nothing special)
    Keyboard
    Dell or HP Media Keyboard (I swap)
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook 4000
Bizarre one, but double check the wired connections to the back as creep has in the past done a similar turn to an old CD drive of mine.

Also are there any jumper settings to configure on the device
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP HDX 16-1010ea
    CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8400 @ 2.26Ghz (2 CPUs) ~2.3GHz
    Memory
    4096MB RAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT
    Sound Card
    Dolby Home Theater
    Monitor(s) Displays
    16.4" Built-in Laptop Display
    Screen Resolution
    1920*1080
    Hard Drives
    Internal HDD 320GB
    External HDD [WD Portable 320GB]
    External HDD [Maxtor 500GB]
    Keyboard
    onboard
    Mouse
    Logitech VX Revolution
    Internet Speed
    6MB Fibre Optic Broadband
    Other Info
    Blu-Ray/DVDRWDL/CDRW/LightScribe, Akasa Assisted Cooling Plate

    Laptop Gaming/Developer Power-User
What DVD drive is it. If you dont know then go to the vista start orb and in the search bar type msinfo32.exe and hit enter.

Expand Components then click on CD-ROM Take a screenshot of that info and post it here. From that info il help you update the firmware for it.
 

My Computer

System One

It's cool. I figured out what was going on. The drive is an ASUS DRW-1608P2 drive and I'm fairly certain the motor has stopped working. Switching the drive to a new DVD-RW has resolved the issue.

The random reading is probably caused by the thing sputtering out it's last breaths. I'm pretty sure this thing is dead (or close to it). The discs won't spin up inside it, which means it's making no attempt to read them.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ and Intel Dual Core T2130
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte M61-P S3
    Memory
    3GB DDR2 800 by Corsair (desktop), 2GB DDR2 800 (laptop)
    Graphics Card(s)
    512MB ATi Radeon HD 4850, 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7600
    Sound Card
    Realtek Integrated HD Audio (both)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    21.5" Acer H213H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x800
    Hard Drives
    250GB Western Digital SATA, 7200 RPM
    320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2, 7200 RPM

    80GB Toshiba Notebook SATA, 7200 RPM
    PSU
    Compucase 585w
    Case
    VAV-something (cheapie neon case, nothing special)
    Cooling
    (Nothing special)
    Keyboard
    Dell or HP Media Keyboard (I swap)
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook 4000
When i went to the asus download page to find updated drivers for you the 1608P2 does not have a Vista compatable driver listed.

Your dvd drive may be fine, just not with vista.
 

My Computer

System One

stew2 said:
When i went to the asus download page to find updated drivers for you the 1608P2 does not have a Vista compatable driver listed.

Your dvd drive may be fine, just not with vista.
Click to expand...
But it's bigger than that. Even at the BIOS level it won't attempt to read what's in the drive (meaning you can't boot from the drive) unless, again, it "feels like it".

If it can't read outside of the OS, it probably won't read in it either. There's something else up with the drive.

I'll keep it around but I'm not too faithful in it at the moment.
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ and Intel Dual Core T2130
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte M61-P S3
    Memory
    3GB DDR2 800 by Corsair (desktop), 2GB DDR2 800 (laptop)
    Graphics Card(s)
    512MB ATi Radeon HD 4850, 256MB nVidia GeForce Go 7600
    Sound Card
    Realtek Integrated HD Audio (both)
    Monitor(s) Displays
    21.5" Acer H213H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080, 1280x800
    Hard Drives
    250GB Western Digital SATA, 7200 RPM
    320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA2, 7200 RPM

    80GB Toshiba Notebook SATA, 7200 RPM
    PSU
    Compucase 585w
    Case
    VAV-something (cheapie neon case, nothing special)
    Cooling
    (Nothing special)
    Keyboard
    Dell or HP Media Keyboard (I swap)
    Mouse
    Microsoft Wireless Optical Notebook 4000
The best way to test it would be to hook it up to a completly different pc, which preferably has XP installed on it. If it doesnt work on that then im afraid its a paperweight
 

My Computer

System One

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