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Yesterday my wife's Lite-On 32x CD-RW drive died (rest it's soul). Her CD-ROM, which was working, happened to be a match for the silver bezel in my case, so I stole it. I bought her 2 new drives: a Buslink 40x12x48 CD-RW and a Lite-On 56X CD-ROM. The CD-RW set to master, the CR ROM set to slave. Win XP is installed.

Connecting them was the strangest thing. Maybe I was reversing cables, I don't know, but sometimes one drive would show up in "My Computer" and sometimes none. When both finally appeared, I had to shut down, pull the plugs, snap the drives into the case (Antec, no screws) and reconnect. I was extremely careful to put things in the right places, I even marked them. When I rebooted, all did not appear. The 2nd or 3rd try everything finally worked with both drives installed. One showed up as D: CR-RW and the other E: CD ROM. All seemed right with the world.

Toady, the wife tried to back up her Quicken files to CD and Quicken said it was unable tosee a CD-RW. She tried to go through Roxio and it said it did not support that CD-RW. She tried rebooting a few times and now all that "My Computer" shows is D: CD-RW and no E drive. If you look at the BIOS as the machine is booting it lists CD-RW, master, ATA 33 and CD ROM, slave, ATA 66. Also, if you push the button, the CD-RW ejects and reads disks. Meanwhile, the CD ROM won't eject and its red light continuously flashes.

I am completely baffled. This has escalated to something waaaaaay beyond my understanding.

a couple ideas, do you have the cdrw on the first (farthest connector from the mainboard) and the cd drive on the one below it? try switching them cd rw slave & cd rom master. i had a similar problem with my 56x drive, it turned out the drive was bad. also i think some cds drives wont work together on the same cable.

good luck maybe someone else would have a better idea for ya.

Having 2 CDs in a system can sometimes be strange. I've seen some cases where they just wouldn't co-exist on the same ribbon.

Some things to try:

- Try reversing the drives (make the master the slave and the slave the master)

- Try setting both drives as CS instead of Slave or Master.

- If you have a free port on the primary IDE, move the CD-Rom to that one as the slave. Leave the CD-RW on the secodnary as the Slave (not the master - many mobos don't like to see a single CD on an IDE port as the master).

- In the BIOS setup menu, where you select the drive type for each IDE port, try setting it differently. Most mobos have an AUTO setting that most people use. Some mobos have an explicit CD-ROM setting. Also most mobos will still detect the CD even if you set the IDE channel it's on to NONE. Sometimes using NONE cures your problem - this prevents BIOS from detecting the drive but XP (which really is running it's own BIOS in a way) should detect it. Often you have a conflict between BIOS and XP/2K.

- Worse comes to worse ditch the CD-Rom and just use the CD-RW by itself (I would recommend setting it up as the secondary slave).

Hope this helps...

On the ribbon cable, the BLUE connector should go to the motherboard, while the BLACK connector goes to the master device, and the gray connector goes to the slave device.

I would also suggest to the above; make sure that you don't have any reminant refrences in your registry pointing to a "Phantom" device.XP is as prone to boogies like any other o/s - so take the
time to completey remove any refrences
to the old device before you go and wipe out an area that dosen't need it. Start with a refreshed mind and logically aproach the problem - try one drive at a time using your current setup;then try to add a cd-rom drive (Master or Slave settings are Required) and see where things hang up- in the bios or at a piont where "Windows Dosen't See it".
I have found that while putting things together that it is easy to forget - The red line on the ribbon cable goes toward the power lead side.Oh well
Hope for the best ,
Bill

Hey Nooy, You might want to try this. I had the same problem with my old Celey setup. When you turn on the computer, hold the eject button DO NOT LET GO, until the tray opens up on the CD-Rom which is not working. Once the door opens, take out the CD if one is in there, and reboot. All should be well!! I don't know if you've solved the problem already, but I figured I'd throw this out there. My problem was with some older equipment though. Best of Luck..

eGo

Thanks to all. I'm not sure exactly what did it but it seems to be okay. I tried just about everything you all mentioned plus a friend suggested I enable "direct CD" to start up each time the computer boots (I had disabled it in msconfig). Something or EVERYthing worked. Thanks again.