IDE Troubleshooting

IDE Troubleshooting

Q:  I am the owner of a Pentium PC and a 16x CD-ROM drive. As with most such drives, it is capable of playing Audio CDs or CDs with programs or data on them. However, within the last few days the CD has stopped reading program/data CD's. When trying to view them with the file manager, it says the CD's are not in the reader when in fact they are! Yet the audio CDs still work. Very strange.....

A: Try the following:

On a system with only an IDE hard drive configured as a Primary Master IDE device, a second device's default configuration as a Primary Slave device or secondary Master should work well, with jumpers and IDE settings in the BIOS set appropriately. However,  in a recent test of a DVD drive, we found that, although the drive could read CDs, DVD discs didn't play. Your problem sounds a bit similar. Therefore, the following info may help.

If you have not already tried the usual fix of starting Windows 95 in Safe mode and removing the device driver for the CD drive from Device Manager, do so. Then restart to normal mode and let Win95's plug and play function re-add the device. This usually fixes the problem. If it fails, another possible solution may be found in Creative Labs' tech support database at http://www.creaf.com/wwwnew/tech/. Creative recommends replacing the files WINASPI.DLL, WNASPI32.DLL and APIX.VXD from a working Win95 95.0 or Win95B installation. This solved our problem, mentioned above, in getting our drive to run. With luck, you will have similar results.

Q: My new 24-speed "US Drives" CD is giving me sporadic game play, choppy frame rates and system freeze-ups. What's wrong?

A: Sounds like a conflict of some sort. I'd guess that behavior like you are seeing is DMA related. Open up the Windows 95 Device Manager, double-click the icon for the CD-ROM and click Settings. DMA should *not* be selected. (On my system, my IDE drive has check marks next to " Disconnect" and "Auto Insert Notification" only.) Have an expert look at it (and this message) if I'm being too technical.

If that isn't the problem, I'd recheck the IDE cabling, jumpers on the drive and BIOS configuration. Isolate variables one at a time. Check the Device Manager control panel to examine the IRQs. Make sure the system is not running in "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode" -- a sign of old 16-bit drivers and sure to cause slowdowns. Try deleting the CDROM device (click "Remove") in Device Manager, restart and then let Win95's plug and play reconfigure it. It could also be the IDE cable, defective drive, etc.

By the way, I would not recommend buying components hardly anybody (i.e., NOBODY on the Web or Usenet) has ever heard of. They add difficult variables (especially with no tech support website) and, for all we know, the US Drives driver itself could be the problem and then you're SOL. If possible, return it and get a good name brand like Toshiba, Sony, etc. A name-brand CD drive with an onboard buffer of 256K or more is best.

For further reading:

• Frequently Asked Questions about Ultra DMA (DataExpert)
• What to consider when purchasing or configuring a system with Ultra DMA (DataExpert)
• See the Q&A reports page for answers to common questions.
• Other IDE Troubleshooting tips and related links:
• Encore Dxr2 DVD kit
• SyQuest SparQ
• Recording CD ROMs
• Deal-Mac tracks the best prices on CD-R drives
• Macintouch.com: A report on using IDE drives in an Apple G3 Macintouch