optical drive not working

[darkorb]

after i transfered cases, my dvd rw drive doesnt seem to be working, when i put in a disc lets say bf2, and i open my computer, nothing showsup, but when i put it into the dvd rom drive, it works. should i make sure the ide cable is fully inplace?

[DragonMaster]

1. Make sure that the IDE cables are not the wrong way around(in case your cable isn't keyed), that MASTER/SLAVE/CS are placed correctly on both drive(I
prefer never using Cable Select)
2. Make sure it's not partially out of the motherboard or drive socket
3. Make sure that the controller it's using is enabled (Say you disabled secondary controller, nothing will work on the 2nd IDE cable)
4. Make sure that BIOS detects the drive
5. In the Windows device manager, go on Primary IDE, put to Auto and DMA places you know that there actually is something connected, and set disabled where you know that there's nothing connected, Windows will start faster. Do the same thing with Secondary IDE.
6. If a controller that you disabled in the BIOS(do this with those that got nothing connected to them) is still showing up in the device manager, delete it, it will not be detected anymore after that.

[werty316]

Did you remember to plug the IDE cable in?
Does it show up in the BIOS?

[darkorb]

thanks dragon, i will check. the ide cable i have plugs into mobo, its 1 long cable, 1 end goes into mobo, and 1 end into the drive that doesnt show, 1/4 down the cable, there is another ide plug which goes into the drive that does work

i didnt disable anytihing in the bios, nor touch anything

[DragonMaster]

OK, I suppose you got SATA drives then, if you really use one cable make one master, one slave, put both in the primary controller, enable primary only in the bios, delete secondary in Windows since it will porablbly think it's still there.

Ideally, you should have one drive on Primary and one on Secondary, both set to Master. The reason is that the controllers can only access one 1 drive at the time, so the performance when doing DVD/CD copies is not that good http://www.bjorn3d.com/forum/images/icons/icon13.gif
If you use two different cables, you'll optionally need to disable the slave detection in Windows Device Manager, makes a big difference when Windows doesn't try to find a drive at each boot. :roll:

Don't use Cable Select, it NEVER worked for me, so it's possible that you get trouble with it also.