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Ultra freakin weird problem with Lite-On LTR-40125S

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:30 pm
by mtnmanseth
Ok, gunna try to make a long story short... :roll:

1.) Got new motherboard, RAM & processor last week. Installed everything, went smoothly, I'm happy.

2.) Started to notice my IDE activity light on my case was blinking once every second no matter what and my harddrive was making repeated clicking noise.

3.) Suspected my harddrive was failing, ran tons of test and its fine. Got advice to make sure that none of my ATA100 IDE cables were bad. Swapped all of them out but still blinking IDE light and hdd clicking. Pulled power and IDE from my CD drives and blinking and clicking STOPPED. Hooked up just my DVD drive and no blinking or clicking. Hooked up just my burner and blinking and clicking are back.... so, I've narrowed it down to my Lite-On LTR-40125S....

Has anyone ever heard anything about this? Lets assume something is wrong with my burner, why on earth would it cause my harddrive to repeatedly click and blink my IDE activity light?

(So right now I have just my DVD drive in my case and everything is normal. I DID NOT have this problem prior to installing my new mb, RAM, and CPU on Thursday of last week but DID FLASH MY LTR-40125S TO THE NEWEST FIRMWARE BEFORE MY NEW INSTALL... does anyone know if the new firmware for this drive causes such issues? If so should I worry about it? Buy a new burner?)

Thank you so much for you help with this!

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:36 pm
by CDRecorder
Strange...

You could try "downgrading" to the previous version of the firmware as a diagnostic measure. I have seen some firmware versions on certain drives cause strange behavior with particular IDE controllers; this may or may not be your problem.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:37 pm
by cfitz
Do you have autorun enabled on the drive? It could just be windows checking to see if a new disc is in the drive. That might account for the periodic IDE access, and the hard disc access may just be a side effect of being on the same IDE controller and/or channel.

cfitz

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:41 pm
by CDRecorder
That's a good thought. I used to notice that periodic HDD-light flickering when my hard drives and optical drives were both attached to my onboard IDE controllers. I never heard the HDD click, though. I now have my hard drives on PCI IDE controllers, so I no longer see this behavior.

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:44 pm
by mtnmanseth
No I have autoplay disable in Windows registry. And yeah, CDRecorder, was thinking I should try to flash the previous firmware to the drive and see if it still does it but the previous firmware on Lite-On's site is grayed out (cannot access)... anyother place I could get it?

As far as the IDE activity stuff goes, my DVD drive isn't causing the ide activity light to blink or my harddrive to click so I'm not convinced it has to do with being on my onboard IDE controller....

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 5:55 pm
by CDRecorder
You can find many firmware versions for this drive here. If one of the flash programs refuses to flash your drive because it is an earlier version of the firmware than you already have, use FlashFix to allow the flasher to flash your drive. Just make sure that you flash the right drive. :D

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:03 pm
by mtnmanseth
Nice! Thanks CDRecorder, will reinstall burner, flash to previous firmware and see if that helps (will let you know :D)

Hopefully this works :-?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:05 pm
by CDRecorder
I hope that helps; let us know what happens!

Also, would it be possible to test the burner on your old motherboard?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:41 pm
by mtnmanseth
Soooo... digressed firmware back to VSOP from VSOR and it still does it. The crazy thing is if I just go into device manager and disable my burner the light blinking stops (I sure wish I would have done this first to test rather than taking my whole system apart! :wink:)

I have decided though that the occassional hard drive click PROBABLY is totally normal and will try to ignore it (its barely audible anyway). As far as my IDE activity light constantly blinking, it must be something that its always done but didn't know it since my old motherboard had a HARDDRIVE activity light and my new motherboard has a IDE activity light... its probably always done this but I couldn't see it because my old motherboard LED only blinked with harddrive specific activity.

Ok, that was fun... think I'm just going to let it be for now unless anyone knows specific IDE use issues my burner has...

Thanks doods for your help, I sincerely appreciate it!

Oh yeah, before I forget, on a totally unrelated topic... how the heck do I check which firmware my DVD drive has? Whats the easiest way?

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:55 pm
by cfitz
You're welcome.

mtnmanseth wrote:Oh yeah, before I forget, on a totally unrelated topic... how the heck do I check which firmware my DVD drive has? Whats the easiest way?

Use Nero Info Tool.

cfitz