Digital Research CD Writer

[asm481]

Has any one any knowledge of this brand? My Stepdad bought one yesterday it is a 48X16X48 speed unit. (I think). When I tried helping him installing it as a slave to his existing DVD drive windows will not boot. It can be accessed in dos by way of a boot disk but windows will not complete a boot (Win98se). I tried it as master, slave, and alone without the DVD rom. Yes I have the jumpers right for each case and tried different IDE cables. BIOS is set to auto and I tried it set to ATAPI device. It is an older Gateway system Celeron 333 with 256mb ram. when trying to boot it freezes after the Win98 splash screen, the screen goes black and then nothing. CTRL ALT DEL does nothing at this point and can only "pull the plug" on it. Is it a bad unit, lousy brand or did I screw up?

[asm481]

After trying all possible connections (ie. cable select, slave, master, single as cable select and master). Everytime same result, windows not completing a boot. I finally decided to contact Gateway and see if I could get some answers via their cat support. Seems that board has an issue with CDRW's and the only way around it is to disable the secondary slave in BIOS as long as you have it set as a PNP O/S. I had never heard of this, I thought that with it disabled you wouldn't be able to use it. The only down fall is it can't be used as a boot device but thats fine cause his DVD rom will still function for this.

Seeing that no one replied It seems not to many people have seen or had to fix this problem.

[cookin chef]

After reading your last 2 posts, it looks like you have solved your own problem. When I used to build systems, rare as it may be I have seen some incompatibilities with cdroms, dvds or cdrw not liking to run properly or coexist with the other hardware. Sometimes a firmware update on the cdrw or a bios flash update to the motherboard can fix these issues. Since this an older Gateway computer, there is a good possibility of it having issues using newer hardware on it.

Here's a good test to confirm your problems. Put that cdrw in another computer (preferably newer and a custom built instead of a namebrand like a friends computer, get permission 1st of course) or take it to a computer technician, you may get charged a service fee though. If the same of a similar thing happens in a different system, then the cdrw could be the problem itself.

Good luck.

[NooNoo]

I haven't heard of Digital Research CDRW's... but thats nothing new, I haven't heard of lots of things

I'm glad you managed to sort it out. That particular ummm.. "excuse" from Gateway is yet another reason not to think of their machines as any other than a disposable computer.

[asm481]

Yes it strengthened my position that a custom build is much better if a person ever thinks they may add anything that may come in the future. As far as trying it (CDRW) in another computer I did that....worked fine in my system! Gateway does not offer a BIOS update for his mboard and I did not try a firmware update but it is now working even copying on the fly from his older DVD player which impressed me seeing mine won't do that unless they are on different IDE cables. So this is just one to remember for that odd problem. I do have to say it was my first experience using the Gateway chat support and I was impressed by their service this go around!

[Anna]

Originally posted by asm481
Has any one any knowledge of this brand? My Stepdad bought one yesterday it is a 48X16X48 speed unit. (I think). When I tried helping him installing it as a slave to his existing DVD drive windows will not boot. It can be accessed in dos by way of a boot disk but windows will not complete a boot (Win98se). I tried it as master, slave, and alone without the DVD rom. Yes I have the jumpers right for each case and tried different IDE cables. BIOS is set to auto and I tried it set to ATAPI device. It is an older Gateway system Celeron 333 with 256mb ram. when trying to boot it freezes after the Win98 splash screen, the screen goes black and then nothing. CTRL ALT DEL does nothing at this point and can only "pull the plug" on it. Is it a bad unit, lousy brand or did I screw up?

Take it has a Cd Rom also or just DVD as original slave?

If it have a CD Rom also you might try putting the CD ROM as the slave on the Writer and the DVD as Slave on HD give that a try