My dad bought one of the $9.99 (after rebates) Cendyne/Lite-On CDRW drives that Whyzman spotted at OfficeMax.

System is a Gateway G6-300.

His old configuration was:

PRIMARY: Master - HDD Slave - none
SECONDARY: Master - DVD Slave - CDRW

I think he may have successfully burned 4 or 5 CD's with the old burner. It's performance quickly deteriorated. Even sent the think back to the manufacturer. There at the end, wouldn't even recognize media to read, much less write.

I suggested only having one optical drive when I installed the new CDRW. Power supply issues. DVD capability was never used, anyway.

From safe mode, removed both of the old optical drives. Shut down, physically removed them and installed the new CDRW as secondary master. Had to change the jumper, so that was checked.

Computer fails to boot into normal Windows. Had to power down with power switch. Reboot gives the message "Windows failed to completely load, try safe mode, etc." Safe mode works fine.

Changed IDE cable. Changed molexes. No difference.

Removed CDRW, so there are no optical drives. Windows boots into normal mode fine.

Re-jumpered CDRW as slave, hooked up with old DVD as master. Only safe mode works now.

Removed CDRW, leaving DVD. Normal mode boots, Windows finds DVD and adds drivers for it.

Hooked CDRW back up, so both opticals are installed now. Boot into DOS with a startup floppy. Access the CDRW, and copy a few files over to the HDD just to test it.

Conclusion: something is preventing Windows from starting up in normal mode with this perfectly good CDRW installed, but Windows works just fine with another optical drive installed.

Suggestions?

Hi Pentachris
Have you tried setting the CDRW as the slave on the Primary IDE?

Have you tried setting pins/jumpers to cable selct? (If available)

What was the order that the IDE cables was attached?
Three connectors on IDE cable - 1st to board - 2nd or 3rd to drive? this can sometimes make the difference.

Until someone else comes along with correct solution this might keep you going

Thanks Ernie.

I'm sure I got the cable the right way around. It wouldn't reach with both installed the other way...

I'm pretty sure it's a Windows (or software - see below) problem, but I'll try your other suggestions just for fun. ;)

2 more things:

OS is 98. Forgot that earlier.

Also installed is TurboTax Deluxe 2002. And along with it C-Dilla. We have talked about the spying nature of this, but they want to get their money out of the program for a few years. Could this be causing the problem? I'd hate to remove it, have them lose their records, and the thing still not work. Problems with old CDRW started before TurboTax installation.

If you are saying the old CDRW worked when reinstalled and the new one didn't, I would take the new one back and exchange it. Since the others work, I would think this is a hardware problem.

Also, he can remove Cdilla with spybot and just let TurboTax reinstall it when he needs to use it. Is he using some feature of it that works past tax time??

Thanks for your response, Budfred.

No, that's nt what I was saying. Excuse my choppy sentence fragments... :o

The new CDRW worked just just fine from DOS only. Once I pulled the old one out, I never reinstalled it.

I removed TurboTax and CDilla. No difference.

I never tried Ernie's suggestions. Growing frustrated, I had to leave before I defenestrated the whole #%@* thing.

I'll welcome any other suggestions and go back in a day or two to try again.

If it worked from DOS only, that does suggest a software problem after all. Since most optical drives are using standard generic drivers, that seems particularly odd. You might want to check Cendyne support to see if there is anything unusual about setting up the software for that drive. You may have to manually install the driver too. I wonder if whatever is causing the problem with this one caused trouble for the old one too...

You might want to consider MSCONFIG and troubleshoot by trying the bare minimum Startup...see if it works, if it does, then add 'em back one at a time till you get the "da bomb!" ;)

I am willing to be that C-dilla is the culprit and you will not get completely rid of it unless you do a zero fill of the hard drive. the darn thing writes to the hard drive outside the MS file system and is damn hard to kill. One of the problems that has cropped up is that when it is instlled it tracks hardware, and then if you change hardware it may not update or lock ou the new hardware (especially if the new hardware is a burner).

There is one test you can do...if you can actually find and down load it...a program called CDRoast-DOS.

You can also try posting a StartupList (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/).

mjc-

If C-Dilla is the culprit, and if the only remnants of C-Dilla are outside of the MS file system, then...

Could I Ghost his hdd over to a spare hdd of mine, wipe his hdd, then restore the image? Or do you think Ghost would pick that info up?

We'll get a startup list posted also.

Here's his StartupList log. I don't see anything that would come into play with this issue. Am I missing something?