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Hello everyone,
I have tried figuring this out myself and I'm about to rip my hair out. Hopefully someone out there can straighten this out for me. A CD-RW came installed with my computer, then I got a DVD-RW and installed that in the bay underneath it. My computers instructions said to set it to "cable select". The top part of the cable was connected to the CDRW, so I connected the middle to the DVD-RW, so both the CDRW and DVDRW were connected to the hard drive. Just today I bought a DVD-ROM so I can rip DVDs to the HD using that, and burn with the DVD-RW. I took out the CDRW and put the DVD-ROM where that was, and put it to cable select. When I turned on the computer, it recognized a new drive, but it just says "CD DRIVE" when I look at it in "my computer", and it won't recognize anything I put in it, cd or dvd. I installed the software that came with it, and that didn't make a difference. The burner is recognized and works fine. SO, I don't know what I did wrong. If anyone out there can help me out, I would really appreciate it. I'm not sure if I have the whole slave, master, cable select thing right, or if the order I have the drives installed makes a difference. Please help. Thanks! Megan =)

What OS are you using? It is normal for a DVD-ROM to be labeled as a CD drive even though it is a DVD-ROM.

The fact that the OS recognizes the drive at all tends to indicate that you set the jumpers correctly, but just to be sure take a look at the back of the CD-RW that you replaced and set the jumper on the DVD-ROM the same as what was on the CD-RW.

The order of the drives shouldn't make any difference.

Double check to ensure that all the cable connectors are seated firmly.

There is always a possibility that the DVD-ROM itself is bad.

cfitz

Hi there,
I have a dell and I'm running on Windows XP. I checked what the cdrw was set to when I took it out, and it was on cable select, so that's why I just set everything to cable select. I checked the device manager and clicked on primary and secondary and both say they are working fine, so I don't get it. Also, I noticed that in "my computer" under the "details" box on the left side it doesn't say NTFS where it normally would say that. It just says "my computer and system folder". That's what makes me think something is up. Ugh. I guess I'll just open it back up again and double check everything and if it's still not working I'll just bring the drive back. I just figured I'd check to see if maybe I just did something wrong. Thanks for your help! ~megan =)

Some drives refuse to work when jumpered as Cable Select (CS or CSEL). Set DVD-ROM as master and DVD-RW as slave (or vice versa).

Furthermore, delete the IDE channel that holds DVD drives from Device Manager and restart Windows...

I tried that, I changed them to slave and master and deleted the IDE and rebooted, nothing changed. I still can't play anything in the DVD-ROM. I was able to solve another problem though, I noticed that I couldn't change the current trans mode from PIO under device 1 under the secondary ide, which is my DVD+RW. I couldn't click on it to change it. So, that was driving me crazy all this afternoon. I randomly came upon some forum where someone was having a similar problem with a Dell, and they had to go into system setup and manually change the drive to AUTO from OFF. So, I figured I'd check that cause I have done everything else and wouldn't ya know, it was set to off. So, I changed that to auto and had to reboot twice, but the mode was changed! It had been writing and reading VERY slow, and I realized it was stuck on PIO. So after that was changed, I was just able to read and write at 4x finally. BUT, the DVD-ROM is still not working, so I'm gonna just bring it back and try something else. Thanks for your help! ~Megan =)

casezille wrote:Hello everyone,
I have tried figuring this out myself and I'm about to rip my hair out. Hopefully someone out there can straighten this out for me. A CD-RW came installed with my computer, then I got a DVD-RW and installed that in the bay underneath it. My computers instructions said to set it to "cable select". The top part of the cable was connected to the CDRW, so I connected the middle to the DVD-RW, so both the CDRW and DVDRW were connected to the hard drive. Just today I bought a DVD-ROM so I can rip DVDs to the HD using that, and burn with the DVD-RW. I took out the CDRW and put the DVD-ROM where that was, and put it to cable select. When I turned on the computer, it recognized a new drive, but it just says "CD DRIVE" when I look at it in "my computer", and it won't recognize anything I put in it, cd or dvd. I installed the software that came with it, and that didn't make a difference. The burner is recognized and works fine. SO, I don't know what I did wrong. If anyone out there can help me out, I would really appreciate it. I'm not sure if I have the whole slave, master, cable select thing right, or if the order I have the drives installed makes a difference. Please help. Thanks! Megan =)

I will suggest you go into your Computer BIOS setup - hit "DEL" key before Windows start to load, then let the BIOS re-detect all your new hardware components and save it. Next time your Windows start up, your problems should all go away.


Vincent