F-ing weird PC issue

[Chadruharazzeb]

Problematica technicale:

I have a QDI DVD-rom drive, and a LiteOn CDRW drive on my PC.

Suddenly for no reason: the DVD unit doesn't read DVD's; the CDRW drive doesn't write cd's; they can both still read CD's but struggle to stream data off them.

Neither drive came with any drivers and afaik, neither needs drivers: XP supports them naturally. The BIOS detects both drives properly.

I am an IT Technician and I've tried everything I can think of (except changing IDE cables), and other tech-bods I've asked are stumped as well.

Maybe one of yous is some kind of genius and can help...

[demon9k]

Tried them in a different computer? Also have you tried one on its own?

[mid]

Stuck any music CDs in your drive recently? The latest "copy protection" from Sony can kill LG drives.

[Roost]

I couldn't get my radiohead hail to the theif to work at all last night.

Worked on xbox but with horrible scratchy noise, on pc it loaded up its own player once and sounded crap. After that even exploring the disc all i could find was .cda files no player...spooky.

I'd forgotten it had this ****e protection on it.

[Chadruharazzeb]

Tried them in a different computer? Also have you tried one on its own?

I intend to try them in a different PC this weekend actually. The only idea I have atm is that it could be due to the gyppo motherboard (ASROCK... who?).

Don't think copy protection has anything to do with it tbh.... haven't been copying any CD's at all....

[Lyris]

Even if you don't copy them, apparently the copy protection can affect it.

I don't see why they bother. Anyone who wants to make MP3s of the CDs could just as easily use a Discman and a line out cable.

[nick_the_judge]

Have you tried to update your ide drivers from the ones windows automaticaly loads. Their usally on the motherboard driver cd? try on the mb manufactors site if you ant got one. Just a thought ive seen it fix a lot of strange problems on pcs in the past.

[nips]

Even if you don't copy them, apparently the copy protection can affect it.

I don't see why they bother. Anyone who wants to make MP3s of the CDs could just as easily use a Discman and a line out cable.

No, my friend. Then you're wasting batteries, and you don't have hundreds of music CDs piled up next you your monitor! And what about those of us who have portable MP3 Players?

MP3s on my PC are the greatest thing ever!

[Chadruharazzeb]

Have you tried to update your ide drivers from the ones windows automaticaly loads. Their usally on the motherboard driver cd? try on the mb manufactors site if you ant got one. Just a thought ive seen it fix a lot of strange problems on pcs in the past.

As far as I know I've already got the latest Hyperion motherboard drivers. I'm a bit loathed to download anything atm as I'm only on 56k (bastards @ BT), but I was considering rolling back to an older driver to check.

Grrrr!!

[mid]

nips - I think he's referring to the fact that copy protection is just pointless when its little hassle to feed a CD player output into the line-in of the PC and rip it that way. Any sound quality loss from going via analogue is no worse than what the mp3 compression does to it anyway.

Personally, I go from vinyl to minidisc instead most of the time and bypass mp3 altogether, but thats because my PC is in a different room.

[Fragmaster]

Ok well not sure about the DVD but go to Adaptec's homepage and search for ASPI drivers, with that you will have a file called aspchk.exe which will tell you if your writing drivers are installed and configured properly. If they aren't then you have the choice to install them

[Chadruharazzeb]

Thanks for that fraggy, I'll try that and let ya know

[Vaipon]

Adaptec's ASPI layer has nothing to do with CD/DVD access in WinXP. Although it's still used by many programs, it's not used for general purpose disc accessing/writing under XP. They are seperate technologies now. It's possible that something has shagged the native NT SCSI layer though. Same thing happened to my brother's PC recently. If you have system restore enabled, try rolling back to the last snapshot. Something has changed somewhere for it to stop working, hopefully rolling back will undo whatever it was.

[Chadruharazzeb]

I'll give that a try this weekend, Mr Vaipon-san.

Taaaaaaaa 8)

[Lyris]

Even if you don't copy them, apparently the copy protection can affect it.

I don't see why they bother. Anyone who wants to make MP3s of the CDs could just as easily use a Discman and a line out cable.

No, my friend. Then you're wasting batteries, and you don't have hundreds of music CDs piled up next you your monitor! And what about those of us who have portable MP3 Players?

MP3s on my PC are the greatest thing ever!

I actually meant that people could use a CD player hooked up to their sound card's line in, then enable the Line In and record the music from the CD player, then encode as MP3.