Hello good PC Forum folks!

I ran into an issue, and I'm a bit stumped now. I was attempting to install a new game last night. I put the disk in my "d"(dvd/cd) drive and I heard the reader begin to process the disk info, then it stopped. I accessed the drive manually, and the system moved at a snail's pace; then it basically froze on me. I wiped the disk off and tried again, same thing. I installed one of my older dvd/cd disk drives and set it as slave. This one did go through the autorun process. About halfway through the installation of the first disk, the older drive stopped completely then, it didn't even make it to the point where it requests the second install disk.

Thinking that maybe it was the game itself, I put in one of my other game disks that I knew worked. The menu screen for this game came up, but when I clicked on 'play' the drive started up, then stopped and nothing loaded.

Any ideas as to what may be causing this? I'm using a brand new Memorex DVD/RW disk drive "d" as well as an older sony dvd drive "f". Im running Windows XP w/sp1. I've turned off my virus software thinking that maybe those running in the background were causing the problems, but it didn't help. I also uninstalled programs that I'm not using thinking that maybe they were hogging to much Ram, but that didn't help either.

Any suggestions?

Sounds like the power lead may be bad.
Connect a different power lead to it.

If no luck, then make sure the IDE cable is securely connected at both ends.

If that does not work, then install a different known working IDE cable.

If still no good, then connect the drive to IDE 1 as Slave if it's currently on IDE 2.
If that works, then the IDE 2 controller or connector may be bad.

If it's currently on IDE 1, then connect it to IDE 2.

Ok-

I tried to reseat the IDE cables and even used brand new ones and no luck. My 'd' dvdr drive will not load a single game at all still, yet it will start a movie dvd up with no problems at all. My recently reinstalled 'f' dvd drive will still autoboot the games and run them with no problems at all. To my knowledge I haven't made any changes to my OS (winxp sp1) within the past month- I really can't figure out why my dvdr drive will no longer boot a game automatically now after it did so often in the past.

Any other suggestions?

Try the drive(s) on a different system.
If the same thing happens, then it(they) may be bad.