I am having some problems with a customers computer!

OK, here are the problems:

1. He says that his sound slows down or gets distorted when running other programs while listening to audio CDs in his CD-Rom drive.

2. He has an extreemly long boot time after the part where it shows the windowsXP logo it just hangs forever and then finnally goes to windows but its rediculously long. He says that while it is hanging that it is trying to access his CD-Rom drive.

Here are the system Specs:
Shuttle AK12 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 1.2GHz
512MB PC133 SDRAM
cendyne CD-RW 4x4x24
Creative GeForce256 DDR

If you need anymore info lemme know thanks alot in advance guys.

It's just a guess, but I'd say the most likely suspect is a bad/loose IDE cable going to the CD-ROM or perhaps even the CD-ROM itself.

The second issue can almost certainly be rectified by going into the BIOS and removing the CD-ROM from the list of potential boot devices or at least move it down in the pecking order. The guess here is that you'll find the CD-ROM listed as the first boot device which is why the PC tries to boot off of it initially. Only after that fails will it attempt to boot off of the hard drive. Throw in a read problem with the CD-ROM drive and you have have a recipe for an extended boot cycle such as you described.

Again this is all conjecture and guesswork on my part so take it for what it's worth.

The wierd thing is that the lag in the boot time happens after the "loading WindowsXP screen" comes up and then goes away.

But I will check the connections thanks for that idea would have been the last thing I have done.

I was thinking could it possibly be becuase I don't have the "audio cable" going from the CD-Rom to the Input on the sound card? I thought those cables were useless nowadays.

i had this happen to a customer of mine...it was the cd-rom that was the issue - the cd-rom was taking an exceptionally long time to initialize...i swapped it out and all is great

[quote]Originally posted by mrwilhelm:
<strong>It's just a guess, but I'd say the most likely suspect is a bad/loose IDE cable going to the CD-ROM or perhaps even the CD-ROM itself.
</strong><hr></blockquote>

This was the thought that came to my mind first

What application is being used to play audio cds? Windows Media player? or something else? IF it is something else that he has installed, have you checked to see if it is compatible with Windows XP?

I have seen the same problem, when copying files to the HD from a cd all sounds are distorted, but the person I was voice chatting with didn't hear and distortion

At this point, given all the available facts I'd say you almost certainly have a bad CD-ROM on your hands (assuming the IDE cable checks out OK).

I worked on a system once that had a bad Smart & Friendly CD-RW that was anything but. It wrote just fine but had trouble reading half the discs that were put into it. And let me tell you, during it's futile attempts to read the disc it brought the entire system to it's knees... you couldn't do a thing. Changed the drive and all was well.

Pretty obvious that it's a stuffed cd-rom

Wow guys thanks for all the imput I haven't gotten this much responce to a problem here ever b4 I guess alot has changed while I was away from here.

Ok, here goes, He is just useing WMP to play CDs so it's not software that is the problem. I told him to go home and blow out and reseat the IDE cables for everything so he is going to do that tonight and get back to me. If that doesn't fix it I will give him some different cables to see if that fixes it. If not I'll swap the CD-Rom. Oh yeah in case this helps anyone help me, the harddrive and the CD-Rom are on different channels both are master the harddrive is on IDE1 and the CD-Rom is on IDE2, the harddrive is useing an 80pin ATA-100 cable and the CD-Rom is useing a 40pin ATA-66 cable.

Thanks alot guys you have been a big help.