Windows won't boot if optical drive removed from PCI card.

[dodecahedron]

this is really weird.

i have a Toshiba DVD-ROM on a PCI Parallel ATA controller card (Siig brand).
i wanted to disconnect it temporarily so i just unplugged the power connector, but left the IDE cable connected.
when i turned the computer on, WinXP hanged! it got to the WinXP Logo screen with the White-on-Black logo, but then the screen went dim (the WinXP logo on the black background was dim) and it hung!
tried safe mode, no dice same problem.

removed also the IDE cable, and WinXP booted no problem!

just to check, i removed the power connector from a BenQ DVD burner on the motherboard controller (secondary slave) but left the IDE cable connected. Windows had no problem booting.
the problem happend only on the PCI controller card.

anyone ever seen such a thing before?
i mean, i disconnected the power to the drive. i was sure that for all purposes it's like the drive isn't there. but apparently not so.

[Ian]

Yeah, that's happened to me before. As far as I can tell, the computer can tell something is connected to the IDE cable.. it just can't get it to do anything without power.

[hazelem]

there's a BIOS on the card - parsed by windows
at the 'enumerating devices' phase.
why windows doesn't give up trying to "initiate"
an inoperable device ? - ask microsoft.

*i suppose your mainboard BIOS didn't see drive.

[Justin42]

Yeah, probably a glitchy BIOS/card issue. I haven't been too impressed with the few SIIG cards I've used before, they seem decent but unable to handle any sort of "unusual" situation. Might want to check if they have a BIOS upgrade for the card; it's most likely the card is causing Windows to hang.. (I.e., it's not drive or cable related, the card is probably telling Windows "hold on, trying to poll this thing plugged into me..")