I have a Pioneer A03S DVD-ROM that is not accessable in My Computer. The CD's will go into the drive and eject so there is power to the drive and it is recognised on boot-up diagnostic screen. I previously had a problem where under device manager there was a yellow ! against "system board extension for PnP BIOS". My motherboard is an Intel SE440BX-2 with Pentium II 400 chip. So I got the latest BIOS upgrade off the Intel site, which has cleared the ! under device manager. I have also noticed on boot-up screen it shows "Serial Presence Detect (SPD) device data missing or incomplete. I know this is something to do with memory, but my profile correctly shows the full amount of memory that I have installed. I do not have access to another drive to test in place of my current drive, or another system to test my current drive on. Any suggestions??? Help will be greatfully appreciated!!!!

Inside your computer there is one wire that comes off which is the power supply and another two where one is connected to the FDD (floppy disk drive) if you have one. now the other should be connected to the hard disk drive which is usually your C:/ make sure this is connected because this is maybe why you have power and that but no happenings. also make sure that if you had a software package with it then make sure that is correctly set up.

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c.a.bridge

SPD is an extra chip on a stick of RAM that would have info on it to direct the BIOS in making automatic settings adjustments for the RAM...not all RAM has it or is it absolutely necessary.

If you updated the BIOS did you make sure that your settings match what they where before the update?

Are your drives/IDE channels set to auto-detect?



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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

1) to mjc. Yes all settings same after BIOS update. That was part of update instructions, so i had everything wrote down. And, yes my drives / IDE channels are auto-detect.

2) to chad. yes all wires are connected. i didn't have software with the drive. It was pre-installed so i don't know if it was specific software. I have checked with Pioneer who inform me that the drive should still work with a general windows provided driver.


Originally posted by mjc:
SPD is an extra chip on a stick of RAM that would have info on it to direct the BIOS in making automatic settings adjustments for the RAM...not all RAM has it or is it absolutely necessary.

If you updated the BIOS did you make sure that your settings match what they where before the update?

Are your drives/IDE channels set to auto-detect?

Please help!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is it possible that a DVD/CD-ROM drive could fail to read discs even though it is still powered? The drive will insert and eject discs and is also recognised as Secondary master on boot-up.

I was playing a game, which I then quit through the game's option menu, ejected the disc, and within no more than 2 minutes later when I put in another game, the CD wouldn't autorun. I went into My Computer to double-click the drive but it said "drive not accessable".

I don't want to buy a new drive if that is not going to work because of a problem with something else, and I don't have another drive to test in it's place. Am I right to assume that that IDE controller card is working correctly if devices are detected in boot-up? Could an IDE cable short out, but with power the drive still be detected on boot-up? I'm not sure what signs to look for that would suggest what the problem is?

The only other indication of any problem is the Serial Presence Detect (SPD) error message on boot-up, as previously mentioned. Although I get this message the correct amount of memory in the system is displayed on various screens. But I don't think that this actually has any bearing on my drive not reading discs!


Help for a bemused individual will be appreciated!!

No the SPD wouldn't (or shouldn't) have any bearing on the drive...


What are the exeact errors you are getting?

Does it say "drive not accessable" or something like that?

Does it do it for all disks?

If it is correctly recognized by BIOS , how is it set in BIOS (to auto)?

You can boot into safe-mode and then go to device manager, look under the CD/DVD drives to see if there is more than one listing for it, if so remove them and reboot, Windows should then reinstall it...


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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

To MJC.

Yes my computer says "drive not accessable".

Yes, it does happen with all discs (CD-ROM or DVD).

yes BIOS is set to auto.

Right, i'll try the safe-mode option. How do I re-boot into safe-mode though. I'm not sure.

As I don't have internet access on my own computer i'll have to let you know what happens later.

Hit <f8> while booting...that will bring up the startup menu...option to boot into Safe Mode is there...(<f5> should take you there directly)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Hi MJC.

I done as you said, gone into safe-mode from boot-up. Looking under device manager showed several different CD-ROM listings including drives i have never had, but anyway i removed them then restarted the computer. Nothing happened.

So, i rebooted back into safe-mode and there was a new listing there, which was the most recent driver i had downloaded from Pioneer's website to upgrade my system to see if my drive would then work. Anyhow, I removed this as well, so that there was no CD-ROM icon on device manager, and restarted the computer. Again it done nothing after loading to windows.

Looking in device manager, there is a listing under CD-ROM for my Pioneer driver, but the actual drive still says "not accessable, drive not ready."

Any other ideas??????

Had same problem with my Creative CD-RW and DVD; try going into control panel to see if you have a disk detector icon, make sure enable disk detect is on, disable it, then search for mediadet.log file and delete. Restart and go back into disk detector icon to enable disk detect; it should fix the problem.

Originally posted by paulcooper:
Hi MJC.

I done as you said, gone into safe-mode from boot-up. Looking under device manager showed several different CD-ROM listings including drives i have never had, but anyway i removed them then restarted the computer. Nothing happened.

So, i rebooted back into safe-mode and there was a new listing there, which was the most recent driver i had downloaded from Pioneer's website to upgrade my system to see if my drive would then work. Anyhow, I removed this as well, so that there was no CD-ROM icon on device manager, and restarted the computer. Again it done nothing after loading to windows.

Looking in device manager, there is a listing under CD-ROM for my Pioneer driver, but the actual drive still says "not accessable, drive not ready."

Any other ideas??????

Hi LaraC

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work. My drive is still unaccessable.


To MJC

I have tried what you said but still no luck, details as per my previous post.