Second Ide

[mike]

HI TCH ers,

 

I have a problem you may be able to confirm or recommend solution.

 

I have a dell dimension 8200 that no longer shows the dvd and cd writer in MY COMPUTER.

 

I have tried them both in another pc and they work.

I changed the cable - no go.

 

I am thinking that the second ide line on the motherboard is shot.

Does this sound right to anyone?

Is there something else I am failing to try?

 

thanks for any suggestions.

 

Mike

[Steve Scrimpshire]

Have you tried switching which IDE controller they are on? Also, make sure you try each one alone on the controller. One bad drive (even intermittently) can cause the other to not operate correctly.

[mike]

NO. I will try that.

 

I assume you mean switch the cables so that the dvd and cdrom are plugged into where the hdrive is now and vice versa?

[mike]

Nope. That didn't work either.

 

I tried booting with each drive ( dvd then cdrom ) separately with no luck.

 

Then tried switching cables so hdrive was in secondary and vice versa - no luck.

 

I think maybe the secondary drive line on motherboard is shot???

[TCH-JimE]

Hello,

 

Best thing to do is to use your working hard drive to work this one out. Move it about through the different IDE positions, if it boots each time, it may not be a problem.

 

What settings do you have for the IDE channgel in your bios? They should all be on auto when you boot, the pageing of the bios should show all your drives.

 

Let us know what it says (it may take several boots to capture it all, its rather fast!)

 

JimE

[TweezerMan]

Let us know what it says (it may take several boots to capture it all, its rather fast!)

On many PC's, you can hit the 'Pause / Break' key to freeze the BIOS output while booting. If I need to remember something or report something back, I write it down on a piece of paper. When done, I press the space bar (aka the 'any key' ) to resume booting.

[mike]

Ok. This lady's pc had Norton Anti-virus - expired.

I removed it , downloaded and installed Avg Free, Adaware SE, and Spybot S&D.

Avg came up clean. The other two find 37 and 43 .

After cleaning, I went into device mgr and removed the troubled ide controller.

On reboot windows xp finds the controller and recognizes both the dvd and cdrom.

However it says that it cannot install them because the information in the registry

was either incomplete or damaged.

 

Well, then, the controller must be ok if it recognized both drives, right?

 

So possible getting ahold of the software for each unit will fix the problem?

[Steve Scrimpshire]

So, when you say 'no luck', I am assuming you mean that it won't boot from the HD on the second ide?

 

Plug the two drives back on the second ide like they were originally and see if you can look into the BIOS settings. If the BIOS sees them, then this is a Windows problem, more than likely.

On Dell's to get into the BIOS, here are the 3 most common key-combos:

F1 or Del.

Some require pressing reset twice

Dell: - Ctrl + Alt + Enter

[mike]

yes, I believe it IS a windows thing because of the message:

 

cannot install them because the information in the registry

was either incomplete or damaged.

 

Just trying to figure out how to rectify the problem.

 

bios is F2

[Madmanmcp]

cannot install them because the information in the registry

was either incomplete or damaged.

 

Just trying to figure out how to rectify the problem.

 

If its saying its a problem in the registry...thats where I would start. But if you can't get the system running you can't get to the registry, doesn't sound good.

[mike]

No, the system runs just fine, Madman. I just have to straighten out the registry section that is corrupt and won't run the dvd and cdrom.

 

How about a repair from the xp disk? Would that do it? I'm thinkin' it just might, otherwise you'd have to do a clean re-install and it runs fine now that it's cleaned up from spybots, malware and the like.

 

I ran sfc /scannow

 

but didn't seem to do anything.

Edited July 29, 2006 by mike

[Madmanmcp]

Well if you have the system up and running did you try a System Restore point yet? I'd take a current snapshot and then start playing with older points and work my way backwards till I found one that worked. Good luck. There are Registry cleaners out there but I never did trust them.

[mike]

So how do you take the current snapshot, and can you go back to the current?

[mike]

Madman - don't you think I could do a repair with the XP disk? I thought that was an option.

Wouldn't that repair whatever got corrupted in her registry since it was probably the install that put it there to begin with?

 

Good to chat with you again, by the way. How ya been?

[Steve Scrimpshire]

If you do a Repair with the XP disk, make sure she physically has the XP product key. Otherwise, if she has installed Service Pack 2 or later (which I personally despise), trying to use a utility to recover her product key from the registry gives you a false number, thanks to SP2.

It's possible the repair will work, but it may have been some other program's installation that corrupted the registry. In other words, I give you an 70% chance that a 'repair' will work. +5% if both drives are seen by the BIOS.

[mike]

ok, I tried ALL the restore points to no avail.

 

device manager says cannot start device configuration information is incomplete or damaged.

 

a search for that message has had me going all day to no avail. I have removed the registry key, removed everything to do with ROXIO, removed the secondary ide from device mgr, nothing works.

even when I hooked up a totally different cdrw , bios sees it, windows finds it but just gives me

the above message about configuration information.

 

 

still searching fixes. even the ones guaranteed to work - failed.

 

 

but will i give up........NEVER!

[TweezerMan]

You don't say which registry key you're removing, but I suspect you probably haven't found the one that is the problem.

 

From the text of the error message you posted, it appears that windows is returning a "Code 19" error for the cd-rom and dvd drivers:

Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. To fix this problem you can first try running a Troubleshooting Wizard. If that does not work, you should uninstall and then reinstall the hardware device. (Code 19)

Microsoft has a couple of articles in its Knowledge Base that may be directly on point with your issue:

 

CD-ROM access is missing and messages cite error code 31, code 32, code 19, code 39, or code 41 after you remove Easy CD Creator in Windows XP

 

CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive appears to be missing after you install Windows XP

 

The first article includes a "Guided Help" utility that can perform the registry edit for you.

 

If you decide to manually delete the registry keys mentioned, the steps described in the second article are more thorough, as they include exporting a copy of the registry keys before deleting them. (But the registry keys are the same ones mentioned in the first article.)

 

Also, the second article contains instructions on how to uninstall the corrupted device drivers (not just remove them), which is not covered in the first article.

 

Hope this helps...

[mike]

That IS the registry key I removed. Made no difference.

 

I haven't, however done the uninstall vs remove device drivers.

 

better try that.

[mike]

after reading the article , I DID do the uninstall thing and get that same code 19 message.

 

Even though the bios sees them ( both drives ) could I be looking at a bad secondary ide, motherboard wise?

 

I put the xp dell re-install disk in and re-booted but it wasn't found.

Edited July 30, 2006 by mike

[TCH-Bruce]

Plug your hard drive into the second IDE and see if it boots.

[TweezerMan]

Later on in your series of posts, you mentioned that you "removed everything to do with ROXIO". There is a Roxio Knowledgebase article on "CD/DVD drives missing after installation", with separate utilities available to fix your registry depending on whether a Roxio product is currently installed or uninstalled.

[mike]

When I plugged the hdrive into secondary I got the blue screen:

 

 

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage

to your computer.

 

If this is the first time you've seen this error screen,

restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow

these steps:

 

STEP 1: Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed.

If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for

any Windows updates you might need.

 

STEP 2: If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware

or software, or try to run Chkdsk after a restart of the computer.

 

 

chkdsk came up clean. I already checked for windows updates. System is up to date.

 

I tried the ROXIO fix and it came up with no change.

 

The ms knowledge base assisted registry fix simply looked at the registry and came back with:

class already exists.

 

If I uninstall the secondary ide and reboot it finds and lists the dvd and cdrom drives in device mgr with the dreaded yellow ! .

 

But after a reboot or two the two drives disappear from device mgr and it lists

the secondary ide with the dreaded yellow !

 

 

[TCH-JimE]

Silly question, but what are the jumper settings for thoose drives and where are they on the IDE cabel?

 

E.g.

 

IDE1 - Hard drive - CD Rom Drive

 

JimE

[mike]

IDE - 1 = HDRIVE ONLY

 

SECONDARY IDE - DVD FIRST AND CDRW SECOND

 

Both are set to cable select.

 

It is how they were from the beginning when they worked.

She doesn't know at what point they said good-bye.

 

She told me today that she went through a bunch of stuff with Dell and they gave up

and said she would have to send it in.

 

I noticed the bios is A05 and wonder if a bios upgrade would do any good???

Edited July 31, 2006 by mike

[TCH-JimE]

Hello,

 

Ok first off, I never do anything by cable select. Do the drives have some jumpers on them, if so, set one to slave, the other to master. Does that work?

 

JimE

[mike]

Jim,

 

I changed them but it made no difference. They still show up in the bios as cd-rom readers, both of them. One is a dvd.

That kind of bugs me a bit.

Edited August 2, 2006 by mike

[Samrc]

No suggestions other than:

or

[TCH-JimE]

Very odd then. If your comfatbale doing a BIOS upgrade, go ahead, but beware of the pitfalls, otherwise ship it back to dell if its still under warantee, or if you havea a spare hard drive kicking around, unplug the current one, install the new one and install just a basic copy of XP on it and see what happens.

 

JimE

[mike]

I put one of my own hdrives in it and it wouldn't even boot it????????

 

 

Sledge hammer is starting to look real good. ( heh heh )

[TCH-JimE]

I am all out of options, so my final suggestion is send it back to dell, sorry!

 

JimE

[mike]

Thanks to everyone for their advice/help on this problem.

 

The problem was solved by reinstalling windows.