My PC has went screwy! This computer has ran fine since 4/12/2004 and 4 days ago screwed up. I left my PC turned on and went to town and it was working A-OK. I came back about 4 hours later with a new game and figured i'd play a game of The Sims first for some odd reason. I poped my sims disc into my 52x generic CD ROM. It did not recognise that a disc was in it. It showed the CD-ROM in My Computer but wouldn't pick up that a CD was in it. So, i checked my 4x HP CD-RW drive and it's working. I figure that my CD-ROM is out (not the first time it's happened to me in several years) So, I poped my backup CD-ROM in and reboot it. Now it dosen't show any CD-ROM drives in My Computer. It just shows A: and C: and Control Panel. I Right click on My Computer and go to my device manager. It shows a problem with both Primary IDE Controller (single fifo) and Secondary IDE Controller (single fifo). Thier parent controller isn't showing any problems. I try to let it reinstall drivers and it says the best driver is already installed. I tried removing it and rebooting to find out that my PC no longer restarts it's self or shuts it's self down now. I manually restart with the reset button and boot back up. It reinstalled the parent controller and the 2 children. both primary and secondary still have problems. I tried playing with my jumper setting on my CD-ROMs with switching thier cable positions and jumper seting for both CS and M or S. nothing is working. I dug out my scott muler PC book and even with it's thousands of pages it told me nothing. Ok so I reboot and go into my BIOS. it shows both of the CD-ROM's as present and identifies them between the burner and the 52x. That makes me think it's not a hardware problem. I boot up with a boot up disc and go with CD-ROM support. I try to acess drives E and F (since it uses the next letter up for diag. tools.)and it says CDR101 Could not acess drive. SO apparently DOS isn't showing them. Also I go to performance on my Device Manager deal and it shows that COmpatability mode paging may slow performance and that Drive C: is using MS-DOS Compatability Mode because some drivers may not be recognized. I think this could be part of my problem. What I think could possible have started my problems. 1.I finally installed my drivers so I could use my HP CD Burner. 2. I Installed the game Driver. I don't see how this could affect it, but i'm listing all the things I've changed between the PC running fine and the start of my troubles. That is pretty much it. other than playing The Sims I haven't done anything on the PC in question. Well ANY help I can get on this would be greatly appreciated. I've read a pile of books 3 feet thick and asked everyone I knew as to what to do. I was told to check my pins on my drives and on my board for bent or pushed in pins. all are fine. Also changed cables. both the ultra-66 and regular cables hoping for some luck. Hope ya'll can help! Help Meee!

Simple to analyze if you understand how the drivers and hardware work. If BIOS sees the drives OK, then the basic system board IDE controller, cable and basic interface electronics of the CD-Rom drives are working OK. If you boot with a Windows Startup diskette (DOS) and it sees the drives and assigns drive letters to them, same as above the basic hardware is working. BUT, if you put a known good CD in to the drives and DOS can not read them, then the drive READ optics and electronics are blown or at least not working for some reason. This is often caused by either dust blocking the read optics, or the electronics overheating. Keep in mind, that lasers have to be kept in optically closed boxes (don't want to damage anyones eyes) and that traps heat. If the system is left on for long periods of time, and do not have good air flow through AND over and around the CD-Rom drive(s), then they can overheat and fail. When you "add" a second CD-Rom drive you have to be careful to make sure the cables do not block air flow around them and that there is still good air flow into the machine around them. On systems with smaller power supplies, having two CD-Rom drives can overload the power supply and as it ages, cause drives to fail. This can usually be checked by unplugging one of the drives (CD-RW) and seeing if the other one starts to work.

Yeah, I've got enough fans and such to keep sufficent airflow in the case. It's got a decent sized power supply to run it. ALso how is it the optics going out? I've tried multiple known good CD-ROM drives to test and see if that was a possibility. it was only in DOS that it said it couldn't read the drives. In windows it dosen't recognize them. It also shows those IDE problems in windows. Help Meee!

Well, I currently have the same problem, and it was put to me to 'Flash the Bios'...so I'm going to give that a try. I'll let u know how it goes! Wish me luck