"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Linea Recta wrote:
"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Linea Recta wrote:
"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Linea Recta wrote:
"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Linea Recta wrote:
I have a strange problem with my DVD burner since yesterday.
When running Windows I can't open the tray anymore.
Also, the device seems vanished from Windows explorer and from
hardware configuration.

But when I boot into BIOS, it is still recognised and then I can
also open the tray normally.

What can I do?


Windows XP SP3
LG GSA-H44N
It helps to know what "interfering" software you've installed.
Tools which mount virtual CD images, can upset burner operation.
Don't know about tray buttons though.

http://forum.daemon-tools.cc/f19/dvd...nt-open-29555/

On Linux and Unix boxes, the tray button can be disabled,
to prevent media with "busy" files, from being removed
and causing the dependent software to crash. So as far as
the phenomenon of a button that doesn't work goes, this
is not unexpected. The button can be disabled by software
quite easily. It's not like the button is just tied to the
tray motor directly. If you boot a Linux LiveCD for example,
by default the button on the tray of the drive with that CD
in it, will be disabled.

Sometimes it can be a hardware failure, but your BIOS check
shows that's not the case.


I now write from my notebook.
The PC has been having bizarre behavior this evening, being clicking
sounds (I suppose one of the hard disks) and spontaneous rebooting.
The DVD burner itself must be OK, because I could boot up from a
Macrium Reflect boot DVD.

This is bad news, I suppose old fashioned IDE hard drives are not
sold anymore I suppose?

A glimpse at the concerning PC:


A good root cause, is +12V power supply rail out of spec. That
makes the clicking noise.

This can be caused by placing too many heavy loads on one Molex
chain. I had that happen when my ATI video card was powered by
the same Molex power cable chain, as several hard drives. The
hard drives started clicking. Once the video card was put on its
own chain, there was "peace in the valley".

But if the power supply is going out, then a slightly low (11V on 12V
rail) power output, can be enough to upset storage.

Think back to what wiring changes you've made recently. It could be
you reconfigured the wiring, while adding storage.


I have made no hardware changes recently. About a year ago I replaced
the power supply. I think I even posted that event in this group. Since
that time everything worked fine.

I have now extracted the "bad tooth" being drive D: which was
configured as primary slave. Luckily this wasn't the system drive. I
can still boot from C: and I have changed the swap file back to C:
again.
Also, both DVD devices work again.

The hard drives were both Maxtor 6L060J3 IDE/ATA 60 GB.
I had the drives monitored by 'Hard disk sentinel' and already noticed
some time ago that D: was reported as less than 100%.
For C: it still reports 'exellent' at this time.

Also, if it is the power supply failing, twice now I've received
advanced warning. If you use fixed speed fans in the computer, you'll
notice the fixed speed fans start to "wander", and go up and
down in frequency slightly. The human ear is sensitive to the
tone of the fan. On my first power supply failure, I noticed
the fans started to wander, many days before the power supply
no longer had enough +12V to do anything. The last time
I tested that (failed) supply, it can't even put out 1 amp of
current on +12V, before the output voltage begins to drop. So
the output became very weak, and the current now, isn't even
enough to run one disk drive all by itself. If you sit the
supply on the bench, with no load, all the voltage read right.
But if you put even a tiny electrical load on it, it goes
out of spec. It's more suited to running a flashlight bulb
now, than 100-200 watts of computer gear. At least it didn't "blow"
and take stuff with it.


That sounds like a 'burn out'. BTW I feel like that myself :-((
For the moment I assume it's not the power supply, because I'm not
going to replace the power supply on a yearly basis.

Some time ago I wrote here about an old hard disk with a broken IDE
pin, wondering wether the drive would still work. I tried it as a
replacement, but it was not detected in any way by the BIOS. So tha's
another drive I can throw away.

If I can't find some replacement for the broken hard disk, It's
inevitable I'll have to look out for a modern PC...

1) There are still IDE drives for sale. They've been out of production
for some time, so it's hard to say where they're coming from.

2) You can also use a SATA drive, and put an adapter in the back of it.
I have one of these, and so far it's worked with everything I tried
it on.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812200156

StarTech IDE2SAT

The black part goes into the new SATA drive. The bare gold pins on
the back,
are for a 40 pin IDE connector. It's a bit hard to get the connector
on and off
the gold pins. There is a "Master:Slave" jumper as well. So if you
want, you
can buy two of those, two SATA drives, and connect two SATA drives to
one 80 wire
IDE cable.

Comes with power cable in the box, for daisy chain connecting it.

http://ca.startech.com/media/img/pro.../IDE2SAT.C.jpg

The main impediment to drive shopping, is whether your system has any
drive
capacity limits. My oldest system, only drives up to 137GB work
properly. It



I have been looking in the mainboard manual but I can't find any hard
information about drive capacity limit.
Asus P4B266 - cpu: Intel P4 1,6 GHz. - RAM: 1512 MB




It's defined by year of origin, amongst other things.

http://web.archive.org/web/200404180...hdd/index.aspx

"Note: Model manufactured after 1st January, 2003 will all
support 48bit HDD (137 GB HDD)."

That is interpreted to mean, "designed" after Jan.1,2003. The idea being,
the IDE interfaces support "double-pumped" register access, which is how
the drive acquires 48 bit addressing and the handling of larger drives.

Since your P4B266 is in the table, it supports 137GB IDE drives,
if BIOS 1007 or later is installed. So P4B266 needed a BIOS update.
That possibly helps, if booting a partition above 137GB. Not really
sure what else would matter in there.

P4B266 Yes 1007


OK, I have bios version 1010. This is the latest version exept for one,
which is branded as "beta".

Furtermore, according to this reply:

http://support.asus.com/faq/detail.a...2-112D10B69093

the P4B266 is able to work with 200 GB drives. So I could consider getting
this drive:

http://www.informatique.nl/110610/we...tal-160gb.html

Although the price is high per MB base...



For earlier motherboards, I have another old FAQ page which listed
a few motherboards and their limits. Anything after 2003, on IDE, is
supposed to be OK.

And for SCSI drives, they don't have the same issue, as the
command interface is different. Even pseudo-SCSI interface
devices such as RAID controller chips, when in RAID mode, can
"hide" the large drive issue. In this case, I'm assuming
we're still dealing with the IDE ribbon cable interface.
If you install a Promise Ultra133 TX2 IDE card, in a non-compliant
motherboard, that's another way to fix it. As the Ultra133 TX2 is
ATA/ATAPI 6 level of interface, and handles large drives. (Some
of my older computers, have a card like that installed. At one
point, Maxtor even bundled a controller card, with one of
their ridiculously priced retail hard drives.)

The support needed, to send 48 bit addresses, is described in
this proposal. This would pre-date the inclusion of 48 bit
addresses in the ATA/ATAPI spec. Most of the magic, seems
to be in the hard drive part.

http://www.t10.org/t13/technical/e00101r6.pdf



Concerning 48 bit HDD, this seems supported by P4B266:

http://support.asus.com.tw/technical...e=en-us&NO=501



--
regards,

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