PLEASE Someone HELP with DVD Burner

**djruss** · June 6th, 2005, 04:49 AM

OK if anyone wants to help me set this up again iv just reinstalled windows xp media 2005.SO what i need to know is whats the first thing i should get and install before i installe the Burner sofeware and witch one i should use for that matter thanks

**b smith** · June 10th, 2005, 03:20 PM

I read your various posts on your dvd burner sharing the ide cable. This is to let you know that I am having the same issues. There is something about this iomagic dvd burner and connecting it with a second cd or dvd drive on the same cable.

My system is running windows 98se, If I hook up the dvd burner as master and the cd burner as slave on the same ide cable the cd burner runs fine, but the DVD BURNER runs really, really slow! And the Hard Drive light is on all the time. Eventually... (after about a minute or so) the dvd finally stops spinning. But from then on, the dvd burner reads disks really slow! If I hook up the iomagic DVD burner all by itself on the ide cable, it works great! But as soon as I hook up the second cd drive on the same cable.. well.. problems.

I have tried everything. I have tried new asapi(?) drivers. I have tried switching the drives from master to slave,. I have tried update drivers for my ide driver. I have tried everything. I am still trying to solve this and I will let you know if I have an answer

**confus-ed** · June 11th, 2005, 06:21 AM

Originally Posted by djruss

OK if anyone wants to help me set this up again iv just reinstalled windows xp media 2005.SO what i need to know is whats the first thing i should get and install ..

The first thing to know about media centre edition is that its generally only for certain combinations of hardware & they don't 'really' support 'diy' this being, most definately, an OEM product ..

..Because of its special hardware feature requirements, Media Center PCs running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 are available only from Microsoft PC manufacturer partners..

From here

I'd say to concentrate on getting this working with xp home, by moving onto media centre you may have other complications I can't envisage..

**confus-ed** · June 11th, 2005, 06:35 AM

Originally Posted by b smith

.. If I hook up the dvd burner as master and the cd burner as slave on the same ide cable the cd burner runs fine, but the DVD BURNER runs really, really slow! And the Hard Drive light is on all the time. Eventually... (after about a minute or so) the dvd finally stops spinning. But from then on, the dvd burner reads disks really slow! If I hook up the iomagic DVD burner all by itself on the ide cable, it works great! But as soon as I hook up the second cd drive on the same cable.. well.. problems...

Welcome to WD forums Mr (ms?) Smith .. see you got me confus-ed straight off !

Sooo-ooo .. why ain't it working right ? .. most likely answer to me, would be that your two drives can't manage IDT whilst connected... So Huh ? ..what's that mean in english ?

IDT is independent device timing, & its a design feature to allow two drives on the same IDE cable to operate at different speeds 'simultaneously' (its not really but it appears that way ). If you connect up two devices to the same IDE channel (read as 'connected to the same wire/cable') that can't support IDT, your drives will drop back from using some much faster DMA mode (direct memory allocation) to a thingee called 'PIO mode' (programmed Input Output) which is much 'sloooo-oow-er' as the cpu has to 'turn up' & process every single disk access directly rather than allowing some bios call to do it in the 'background' ..

Simply put, some combinations of drives on the same cable won't 'work right'

(any updated bios for the motherboard may well help).

Try juggling your connections around or consider an add in IDE controller card (probably about $20 USD) so that each drive can have its own channel (cable!)

.

**dhoff23** · June 12th, 2005, 01:21 AM

Is your motherboard a VIA chipset? Also is your hard drives jumper set to master not the generic setting most drives ship with? I had the same problems and I ended up getting a NVIDIA chipset based board and I have not had a problem since. I have a Magic Spin 12X and Samsung 16X DVD burners and they didnt like the Buss-Master timing of the VIA chipsets. The work around that helped was I loaded the generic Microsoft PCI buss master or hard disk controller drivers which can be found in the add new hardware wizard. There was a slight performance hit but not that bad I couldnt live with it. Dedicate your HD as the master on the Primary cable and your slowest burner as the slave on the same cable. Now make your fastest burner the master on the secondary cable. Also delete both of your drives from the device manager before you install the Microsoft HD controller. Do a shutdown not a restart, wait 10 seconds and reboot, if prompted to install the VIA disk controller choose no and then choose the MS disk controller. One thing is for certin however, their is alot of hardware that is not compatable with Media Center 2005. Their are other alternatives out now that do support a multitude of hardware. Good luck hope this helps.

**b smith** · June 15th, 2005, 08:47 AM

Originally Posted by djruss

OK if anyone wants to help me set this up again iv just reinstalled windows xp media 2005.SO what i need to know is whats the first thing i should get and install before i installe the Burner sofeware and witch one i should use for that matter thanks

You might try a process of elimination...

Try connecting the DVD burner ALL BY ITSELF on the ide cable. See if it works without another cd drive or dvd drive connected. If it does work like this, then try connecting the second dvd/cd drive to the ide cable. If the dvd burner doesn't work with the second dvd/cd connected, then you have the same problem I have! My dvd burner has problems when I connect a second dvd or cd drive to the same cable.

You should contact the manufacturer of the DVD burner for help/upgrade or replace/repair.