HD act. LED always on after installing CDRW

[Alejandro]

Hi, i have a Soyo M/b with two IDE Channels.
It supports up to ATA 100, so i have two 80 wires cables.
Till yesterday i had it set as this:

Primary master: Maxtor 10GB ATA 100 at the end of the first IDE cable
Primary slave: Maxtor 4GB ATA 33 at the middle of the first IDE cable
Secondary master: LiteOn CDROM ATA 33 at the end of the 2nd IDE cable

I just got my old Creative 4224 CD-RW repaired so i choosed to set it as this:
CDRW as secondary master (end of the second cable)
CDROM as secondary slave (middle of the second cable)
Now, everytime i use my computer the HD activity LED is always on as if it was the power LED.
The only thing i've tried so far is removing the CDROM, leaving only the CDRW as slave.
That returned the HD LED to normal, but i need to use both, so i plugged it back,
and apart from the LED the machine seems to work ok (i've even recorded a cdrom succesfully)
Now, any ideas what it could be? may be the m/b?
What should i do?
Thanks to all

[joea64]

Well, if the HD itself appears to be operating normally, your problem could be ascribed to something as simple as the HD LED connector being incorrectly plugged into the motherboard. I seem to remember a few years back, on an older system of mine, that one time I plugged the HD LED connector into the wrong place on the strip of jumper posts that controls the various front-panel buttons and LED's, and the LED stayed on all the time until I figured out what was wrong, opened the case, and reconnected it correctly. Have you tried that?

-Joe-

[Alejandro]

Maybe i wasn't enough clear: this happens only when the 4 devices are plugged. I can assure it's not the LED's cable.
Minutes ago i've tried setting CDRW as slave and CDROM as master: same deal. I've also tried with another IDE cable (this being a standard 40 wire) and didn't change anything. The LED works normally only when one device is on the secondary channel as master, and the slave is not used.
(i didn't tried putting one device as secondary slave and leaving the master unused, but it wouldn't work either, right?)
I'm guessing this could be the m/b (till now i've never used secondary slave).
Last thing i will try now is connecting a third hard disk as secondary slave (only device i have left to try) and post back later. Meanwhile, if anyone can help i'll be thankfully.

[Alejandro]

ok, i'm back from test and here are the results: 99% that it's the CDRW causing the problem. Tested with a HD instead, both as master and as slave, and the LED worked fine.
I'll test tomorrow at work my cdrw in another computer to ensure it's causing the problem.
It's very possible, since i had a power problem it didn't worked so fine. It's strange that yesterday i've been able to burn a cd...and strager that when it's plugged on the channel alone (as master and no slave) the HD LED works fine...
well, that's it.
Thanks anyway, and if you have any idea what problem could be causing this inside the cdrw and if it could be fixed, please tell me.
See ya!

[Alejandro]

ok, tried out my cdrw here at my work computer (PIII in a D815EEA Intel m/b) and didn't happened the same, but there where some problems anyway. When loading Windows with a secondary slave as i tried at home, it hung up after the logon. When removed the secondary slave HD installed on purpose to test, the machine worked ok. Guess the logical part in the cdrw that controls the IDE channel is screwed up. It seems to work ok if alone in the channel though.
However, after removing it from my home PC leaving only the cdrom, now i can't see the cd's content in Explorer under XP (although the title of the cd is showed, the content is not)
I've tried removing the cd drivers in safe mode, didn't help.
Also thought it was the Easy cd creator, so i removed it, but not.
So i used Restore System and returned to where Easy CD creator was installed, didn't help either.
Do i have to reinstall XP or is there some more recovery procedure i can try before? i've heard something of a recovery console, how does it work?
Thank you very much

[mjc]

Quite possibly in your mucking about with EAsyCD you screwed up the ASPI layer.... ASPI driver and checker (http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/drivers_by_product.html?sess=no&cat=/Product/ASPI-4.70) (the XP version, and just use the check function for now....)

Also some of this sure sounds like the drive is jumpered for cable select instead of actually being jumpered for the position it is being installed into...if you are sure the jumpers are correct, look at the circuit board and see if there is anything that is possibly shorting any other jumpers.

If all that fails, then it definitely is not fixed, and if it is still under warranty, get it replaced.

[Alejandro]

thank you mjc, i'll download the ASPI checker and try it out at home tonight, tomorrow i post back and tell you what i get.
As for the cdrw, forget about it, definitely are not the jumpers. If you search a bit, time ago (about two months) i posted some thread because of a cheap power supply which burnt my cdrom and left me with a non working cd-rw. Well, this is that cd-rw, a friend of mine has been able to at least make it record and read cds, but it seems that the master/slave part of the circuit got screwed by the PS.
However I expected that it would not work totally fine anymore.
Guess it's time for a 24x replacement :)

[mjc]

Could be, but if it works when it is by itself then it may be time to pass it down to a secondary machine, instaed of the trash. It is always nice to have two burner equipped machines around.

[Alejandro]

Never said it would go to trash!!! i'm not so mad
I'll sell it together with my old K6-2 machine...but i'm considering also keeping it in my old Pentium 200MMX...have to decide yet.
Meanwhile, another friend is testing it at his computer which is almost identical to mine (same m/b and CPU) to see if it happens to him.
Thanks for suggestion anyway!;)

[mjc]

I keep forgetting you are so far south...hehe.


Not quite as trash happy down your way, but unfortunately so many of todays products are designed to be pitched after a couple of years.

[Alejandro]

well mjc, tried out the ASPI checker last night...it told me that the four files where missing and ASPI was not properly installed. Couldn't wait till today so i installed it. Now it tells me that it's installed correctly but the problem didn't change.
It seems that it's another sort of problem.
When no cd is on and you click on the cdrom drive in Explorer, instead of the message that requests a cdrom to be inserted, it goes back to the last drive selected.
Any ideas?

[Sylvander]

Hello Alejandro

Do you have all your drives set to "Auto" in the BIOS "Standard CMOS Setup"?

The drive parameters must be correctly set or the drives won't work.

If they are not set to auto and you change the Primary/secondary, Master/Slave settings for the drives then the drives and their parameters will not be paired up correctly.

Put another way:
If the parameters are specified manually or by "Static Detection" using "IDE HDD Auto Detection" in the BIOS Then:
When you change the Primary/secondary, Master/Slave settings for the drives, the drives and their settings will no longer match.
The result will be that mismatched drives will not work!

[Alejandro]

All drives already set to AUTO and detected ok, Sylvander.
That's not the problem, thanks anyway

[Alejandro]

ok, solved the problem in the weekend.
Somehow my XP user account was screwed, and only mine.
My girlfriend told me that she could read cds, so i created a new account for me, moved on, and wiped the other.
Thanks to all!