Audio noise after installing DVD/CD rewritable

[BonedAgain]

I just installed a LiteOn 811S DVD/CD rewritable drive in my 2yo Gateway 1100 athlon running win2k. Now I get all sorts of odd audio sounds whether I am using the drive or not. I don't mean mechanical noises from the drive itself (the level of those seems normal) but rather noise through the speakers, not only the motor whine when the drive is spinning, but also sounds when there is no disk in the drive, such as a very odd "zipper unzipping"-like sound which seems to occur with every use of the pc's cpu, as when moving the mouse, scrolling, opening/closing a program, etc. Have tried uninstalling/reinstalling various audio devices, still there. The sound disappears when the audio or power cables to the drive are disconnected. This is supposed to be a good drive (it may be, haven't gotten around to actually using it yet), but there's no way in Hades I am going to be able to tolerate all this racket. The sound is quite audible with the system audio set mid point, where I usually leave it. 2 prior cd-r drives in this system (the OEM Philips & a Cenedyne that crapped out after 8 months) were silent. Did some searching, only thing related to DVD noise I can find relates to the mechanical drive sounds, not the symphony of cacophonous crap I'm getting from my speakers. Any ideas?

TIA

BA

[jabarnutcase]

Almost sounds like something is not grounded or shielded properly.

Have you tried another Audio cable or a new IDE Cable?
You also mentioned that the noise goes away when the audio cable is disconnected.
I believe, if you have the "enable digital audio for this device" box checked in the properties tab for that particular drive in device manager, you don't even need the audio cable. (I know one of my drives is set up that way and the audio works great).

Other than that, I'm still thinking how I would attack this... It would drive me nuts too! :rolleyes: ;)

[BonedAgain]

Thanks JNC, I had thought it was a ground/shielding problem too and was anticipating having to return the drive since neither of my previous drives had the trouble, but removing the analog cable & going with digital as you suggested did the trick! You have to wonder why they don't suggest this in the manual???

Thanks again!

BA

[jabarnutcase]

Glad it worked out for you!
Yes, I found out about the audio working without the analog audio cable purely by accident. (Didn't have a spare audio cable around one time!)

I've had so many drives since then that came with an audio cable the wouldn't fit my sound card connector, I rarely even bother trying to hook them up anymore.

(Edit) BTW...I have two Lite-On Drives that I really like and have been great so good luck this time! ;)