Hi all,

Anybody know what the subject line means? This was in the event viewer this evening shortly after a game and then my system crashed several times. The cd-rom referred to is a two year-old pioneer dvd player that has worked flawlessly. However, as I look back at my event log, it could also be referring to my cd-rw, as I coincidentally switched them around several days ago shortly after the first report of cd-rom problems on the event viewer (of which I was unaware until this evening). I only became aware of the problem tonight after the system crashes which I thought might have been due to those new windows security updates. Thanks.

marty

Probably a chipped or bad CD-ROM.

What do you mean by the CD-ROM is chipped? If you mean the CDs, they look fine, plus I used a couple of different ones with the same report on the event viewer . . . . . hmm, I may have to retract that. Actually, I just bought Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, and it has crashed, but it has a well documented history of crashing as I've since learned, and it was a very different crash from these others, which may all have been associated with Midtown Madness2, a game my son loves to play. But when I switched around my dvd and cd-rw (I switched the arrangement in my case, so the cd-rw became secondary and the dvd became primary) I might have played Midtown Madness to check out the system, and that would account for the very first incident. Please keep in mind that my system otherwise does not crash, it is and has been very stable. Anyway, I'll chew on all of this and experiment a bit. Maybe reinstall Midtown Madness2. Thanks.

marty

Your problem can also be caused by the following:

-DMA is disabled for one or both drives in Device Manager. Make sure DMA is enabled.

-Dirty drive lens. Clean it with a cleaning kit.

-Bad IDE cable or bad drive. Connect each drive one at a time as Master on IDE 2 with a different known working IDE cable.

-Bad RAM. Try different RAM.

-PSU underpowered. Try a borrowed unit.

Thanks, ski. I just let Flight Sim 2004 run for about 15 minutes with storms and weird lighting, and so forth. Previously ran Train Sim (do you see a pattern here), and both ran just fine. So I don't think there is any problem with my ram, my psu is a 520 vantec, dma is enabled for both. Now, as for the lens, there might be something there, plus the cable, as I just installed (famous last words) a new cable, one of those round cables, for my optical drives. I just installed my system into a super lanboy case, and the round cables look much better. First time I've ever used them. So that is a possibility. I may swap out the one drive and replace it with another cd-rw I have that has always worked just fine. It could be the drive.

But for now, I'm just going to run all the cds in that drive as I can and see what happens. I'm really starting to wonder if it might, indeed, be the Midtown Madness2 cd itself, as I've had no crashes or any event viewer reports about the cd since the last time I used that particular cd.

Again, thanks all for the suggestions. I'll report what happens.

marty

Bit of an update. I ended up restoring a backup copy of my hdd (I managed to mess up my registry - Registry First Aid is a great program, but be careful with it). Anyway, my system was now pretty much back to a pristine state, with no games installed. I reinstalled two games that were causing me problems, crashing and yielding these event viewer messages, Microsoft's Motocross Madness 2 and Midtown Madness 2. After reinstalling the games, I continue to get the same "CdRom0 has a bad block" for both programs when I load the cd to start the game. Now this was using a Pioneer DVD drive. Also note that the programs were not crashing, but I keep getting this error message on the event viewer. So I pulled the drive and installed a perfectly good TDK CD-RW that I had sitting around and that always has worked flawlessly. I've only run one of the programs, but I get basically the same message, except now it says "CdRom3 has a bad block".

Please keep in mind that my dma settings are correct in device manager, and there is nothing in windows except for these event viewer messages to indicate any problems.

So, I've ruled out a faulty cd, and I've ruled out a faulty drive.

I have searched via google for an explanation, but cannot find any. Does anyone know what the hell this event message refers to, and should I even worry about? Thanks.

marty

Could you post the full message from the Event Viewer and/or enter the Source and ID (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/support/ee/search.aspx?DisplayName=Windows%20XP%20Professiona l&ProdName=Windows%20Operating%20System&MajorMinor=5.1&LCID=1033)

cdrom and 7, that's the "source" and "id". Thanks for that link, Paul. I plugged the data in myself, and basically it says that the cd rom is dirty or there is something wrong with the cd itself. But now at least I understand how this is used. I'll play with it some more. I'm going to install another program and see what happens. I played Midtown Madness 2 furiously last night, and it crashed after about 20 minutes. I still got this same "cdrom" message. However, the crash may have been due to the fact that I had my system maxed out in terms of performance. So I'm going to try it again today with my settings turned down, plus add another program.

I'm also going to reinstall my previous hdd which had been working just fine and where I never noticed any problems, although I cannot recall if I was using these games on that hdd. That way i can look at whether the hdd is a factor. My current hdd is a sata 10K 74gig raptor. I'm not sure if the serial drive somehow interacts with the system such that I'm getting these weird error messges. I'm in the fortunute position of having this hdd backed up on another hdd (and some cd-r media), and it takes less than 10 minutes to restore it, so if I want to try some changes and they don't work, I can always restore the drive.

Thanks again.

marty

BTW, I just finally read last night about KOC. Very sorry to hear about her loss. We shared some forum dialogue re. New Mexico, where I had lived for 10 years, and she was always friendly and respectful of others.

My guess is that if the blocks of data can't be read properly because the media is not corrupted that it could relate to the CD-Drive needing different drivers - with the current ones causing problems in transferring the data chunks.

Changed cable to my optical drives, but that made no difference. Still get the same error message. So I can rule out the drives, the cable, and the cds. That leaves, hmm, I'm not sure, the driver. Maybe. Right now, the drives are using standard windows cd drivers. I went to the pioneer web-site, and there is no driver update, only a firmware update, but that seems irrelevant since this is occurring to a non-pioneer drive as well. I could update my via drivers, but I'm always loathe to do so unless absolutely necessary given the problems that can occur. But maybe I'll give it a shot.

marty