Got myself a new computer and have 2 Cd roms in it... one is a normal 52x LG the other is a 52x32x52 cd burner.... bios recognizes them both... when logged into windows and go to My Computer, it recognizes both cd roms, but for my burner ... if i insert a disc...nothing gets read... even if i take out the disc and just double click on the cd burner icon it doesn't give me a warning that no cd is in the drive. What can be the problem??? Also my bios recognizes my hard drive as UDMA4 and burner as UDMA2, but when you check in device manager in windows it tells me my hard drive is at UDMA3 and cd burner at UDMA1... any clue as to why?

Do you have the MBoard chipset drivers installed? Are you using a 40 wire or 80 wire IDE cable. Should be using an 80 wire.

As for the MBoard chipset drivers no i have not installed them, I bought this computer used, it's a QDI Legend with a Via Appalo chipset... but as for the IDE cable, yes it is 80 wire, the CD rom is connected to the 40 because it is slower then the hard drive and i know that if you connect the cd rom to the 80 wire that the hard drive would run at the slower speed of the cd rom.

>> i know that if you connect the cd rom to the 80 wire that the hard drive would run at the slower speed of the cd rom. << Not true. That used to be the case when PIO was the fastest method of disk access, but with UDMA individual disk on the same cable operate independently. Stuart

Dead CDRW Drive Optical Unit ??

"...my bios recognizes my hard drive as UDMA4 and burner as UDMA2, but when you check in device manager in windows it tells me my hard drive is at UDMA3 and cd burner at UDMA1..." The bios often reads the description of the optical drive from the drive itself - if that desciption it finds on the drive includes the max capability of the drive, that doesn't necessarily mean your mboard chipset supports that max capability. Whenever you install Windows from scratch, after Setup has finished, you MUST load the drivers for your mboard, particularly the main chipset drivers, so that Windows has the proper drivers for and information about your mboard. If you don't do that, you are likely to have problems, especially if the main chipset is newer than when the operating system was first released. If you're not sure whether they were loaded, it does no harm to load them even if they are already there, and you don't have to un-install main chipset drivers before installing them again if they are already there. Via Apollo chipset doesn't tell us much - there are several different ones. e.g. If it is MVP3, your mboard supports either a max UDMA 2 or 4. Get the latest main chipset drivers for all Via chipsets here: http://www.viaarena.com - Drivers - operating system - Chipset or Platform. Your burner should normally be detected as capable of UDMA2 in Windows unless it is really old, but if you haven't installed chipset drivers, or if the drive is defective, Windows may detect it as capable of a lesser mode. Also, some older CD burner drives have pins for a jumper for setting the mode of the drive to less than UDMA2 - if it has pins for such a jumper, check to see if the jumper is installed. There may be info about that on the label on the drive, or in any case the manufacturer's jumper specs for that model will tell you whether it has that. If these particular optical drives are on a data cable by themselves, or only these two optical drives are on a data cable, they will work fine with a 40 wire data cable. If you had a fairly recent DVD burner drive that is rated DVD+R or -R 16X or more, you probably would need an 80 wire data cable for that. Check the data cable the burner drive is connected to. It is easy to unintentionally damage the cable when removing it, especially 80 wire ones. Check for damaged insulation or broken wires at both edges of the cable, at all the connectors and under the cable clamps there. If in doubt, try another data cable. The drive tray should eject and retract when you press the button for that on it's front, as long as power connector to it is connected and the computer is on , even if no data cable is connected. If it doesn't do that, the drive's logic board is fried. The most common thing that eventually kills optical drives after they have been used a long time is the sleeve bearings in the drive motor deteriorate to he point such that there is too much friction in them - at first the drive can't spin as fast as it is capable of, then later it can't even spin fast enough for even 1X speed or doesn't spin at all. In the latter case, Windows can't recognize that there is any disk of any type in the drive. It is not easy to test the drive if it still spins, but it is easy to test it for no spin. Eject the tray, insert a CD, note it's position. Retract the tray - the led on the front of the drive should come on briefly, then go out - let it try to spin at least until the led goes out. Eject the tray - if the CD is still in the same position, the motor is not spinning. If the led stays on for longer than is usual, or goes on and off for much longer than usual, the drive is probably toast - either the drive motor does not spin, or does not spin fast enough to achieve 1X speed, or it's logic board is fried. If the led never goes on, it's logic board is fried.

">> i know that if you connect the cd rom to the 80 wire that the hard drive would run at the slower speed of the cd rom. << Not true. That used to be the case when PIO was the fastest method of disk access, but with UDMA individual disk on the same cable operate independently." Going by all the info I've come across, I believe that's never been true - the cpu always accesses the drives one at a time at the max speed that drive is capable of, taking into account the capabilities of data cable used and the capabilities of the mboard chipset - most of the time that happens so fast - the cpu reading or writing to one drive then another - you aren't aware of it. However, some really old chipsets could not run an optical drive correctly when it was connected to certain connectors/controllers - that wouldn't apply in this case.