I have a Philips pcrw1208 cd-rw drive that I installed about a year ago. It is connected as the Master drive (and the only drive)on the second IDE cable. Just recently I noticed that occasionally it is not recognized by the BIOS upon startup. Normally, it would list my cd-rw drive last, then proceed to Windows after a second or two. But I've also noticed that when the BIOS doesn't recognize the drive, it will pause for about 10 to 15 seconds at the point where it is usually listed before finally proceeding to Windows. After I restart the computer a time or two it eventually recognizes the drive, but the problem still arises from time to time.(Weird, huh?) The second part of this problem is that when the drive IS recognized and I try to burn a disc, it will freeze up somewhere during the middle of the process. When this happens, the light on the front of the drive still shows that it's writing to the disc. And then after I cancel and close the program, the light still stays on and the disc won't eject and I have to restart the computer. Also, when it tries to read a disc, I will occasionally get a blue screen that tells me to insert the disc or clean the disc if one is already inserted. Sometimes, it will shut off the monitor.(For some reason, these both seem to happen specifically when trying to open a video file that's on the disc.) I have cleaned the discs as it said and also bought a disc to clean the lens inside the drive and I still get the same problems. The ribbon cable and power cable both seem to be solidly plugged in and the jumper is set correctly. The drivers also still seem to be installed correctly. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to fix these problems or at least pinpoint what is causing them. Thank you very much.

make sure DMA is enabled on drive.

I think that at the end of the day you are going to have to accept that your CD-RW has had its day. Until you can get the BIOS to recognise the CD consistantley the other problems are just going to reacure. Failure of the BIOS to recognise the CD is down to hardware. Nothing to do with drivers or DMA. They are effects, not causes. One other thing you can try is a different cable. Cables sometime go bad. If this doesnt work a new CD drive is the only answer. Stuart