okay I have had a slew of problems over the years with my computer
regarding anything to do with any sort of cd drive, dvd drive
anything.

running windows 2000 on x86, 261,566 kb ram. 
originally came with a cd and dvd. cd never worked. dvd only worked
partly, any extended use would cause system to freeze, freezes would
often occur by just clicking on the icon for the drive while in My
Computer. could be memory I guess but I really run hardly anything.

when I got rid of the old cd the dvd worked. 
Now I went and got a new dvd burner. It works fine for reading but it
won't burn. It did however fake burning. I posted about this at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.publish.cdrom.software/browse_thread/thread/c50ec5a01e96000e
, I attempted the suggested remedies they did not work. have since
read the cd and dvd faqs they had no pertinent information.

So I decided to get an external dvd burner on USB. It worked, it
burns. oops, won't read what it burned though. oh, and can't run both
it and the other dvd burner, basically have the same symptoms as
before with cd and dvd together when I first bought the computer. The
error message from trying to read the disk is

G:\ is not accessible.

The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

this error message is the same for either drive. 
however the external dvd burner as noted will burn (or at least the
disc seems to have been burned I can't really tell since hey I have
nothing to read it on), just not read what it has burned, and it will
interestingly enough read normal cd files.

so what I would like to have is the following:
1. That I can run both drives without My Computer freezing up whenever
I try to click on one of the drives
2. That I can burn and read what I burned.

---

Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 20 Aug 2005 16:46 PDT

pantagruel...

The first thing I'd be curious about is how the original
CD and DVD were set up in regards to IDE connections.

Typically you'd want to set both of them up on the 
secondary IDE channel, with one slaved to the other,
while your hard drive(s) is on the primary IDE channel.

If you set one of them up as a slave on the primary IDE
channel, it might cause problems.

If you still have the CD-ROM on the secondary IDE, go 
to My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device
Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Secondary IDE
-> Properties -> Advanced Settings, and check if the
device(s) 0 and/or 1 are set for "DMA if available",
and what the Current Transfer Mode is. If the current
mode is PIO, this could be a problem.

I don't know if there's a way to check or set the 
transfer mode for the USB device, as I've never used
an external DVD-ROM.

You say that the DVD burner seems to burn, but you're
not sure, since you can't read it. You should be able
to visually see that the DVD has a different look on
the clear side (bottom) where the data has been burnt
in.

You also don't indicate what software you're using for
the burning. Some are more cantankerous than others.

Nero is a relatively reliable program, but even so, 
you might try reducing the speed of the burn, and see
if you get different results.

Let me know where this takes you...

sublime1-ga

---

Clarification of Question by pantagruel-ga on 21 Aug 2005 12:38 PDT

well some clarifications, can't do all of them now because I basically
crashed my system earlier and it took me ten hours to get it up and
running again.

it's not the software as I have tried about ten different ones, none
work. Nero was one of them.

yes they are both set for DMA if available. can't check current
transfer mode as  I took everything out in trying to get the system
running again. it's almost ten here so I'm not going to work on it
more tonight. They were not set on the primary IDE.

I'll have to take back the statement that the disks seem to be burnt,
the programs announce burns as succesful, I thought the DVD earlier
had looked burnt when I looked at it but looking at it again I saw it
must have been a trick of the light.

no I can't seem to find transfer mode for the external burner.

---

Clarification of Question by pantagruel-ga on 13 Sep 2005 09:31 PDT

"If you still have the CD-ROM on the secondary IDE, go 
to My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device
Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Secondary IDE
-> Properties -> Advanced Settings, and check if the
device(s) 0 and/or 1 are set for "DMA if available",
and what the Current Transfer Mode is. If the current
mode is PIO, this could be a problem."

This solved my problem.

pantagruel...

Thanks very much for clarifying which part of the information
I provided resolved the problem. I'll reproduce my original
comments here, for the sake of future readers.

------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing I'd be curious about is how the original
CD and DVD were set up in regards to IDE connections.

Typically you'd want to set both of them up on the 
secondary IDE channel, with one slaved to the other,
while your hard drive(s) is on the primary IDE channel.

If you set one of them up as a slave on the primary IDE
channel, it might cause problems.

If you still have the CD-ROM on the secondary IDE, go 
to My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device
Manager -> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers -> Secondary IDE
-> Properties -> Advanced Settings, and check if the
device(s) 0 and/or 1 are set for "DMA if available",
and what the Current Transfer Mode is. If the current
mode is PIO, this could be a problem.

I don't know if there's a way to check or set the 
transfer mode for the USB device, as I've never used
an external DVD-ROM.

You say that the DVD burner seems to burn, but you're
not sure, since you can't read it. You should be able
to visually see that the DVD has a different look on
the clear side (bottom) where the data has been burnt
in.

You also don't indicate what software you're using for
the burning. Some are more cantankerous than others.

Nero is a relatively reliable program, but even so, 
you might try reducing the speed of the burn, and see
if you get different results.

------------------------------------------------------------

I'm very pleased to learn that you've been able to resolve
the issue. If you experience further difficulties, don't 
hesitate to come to us again.

Best regards...

sublime1-ga

What is the wattage of your power supply?

  If your external DVD player draws power from the computer rather
than it's own PSU then it may be causing your computer to crash if
your power supply is a very low wattage or malfunctioning.

Are your fans clean?  

  Burning to DVD with only 256MB RAM increases the work on the CPU, if
the fan is not extracting heat away from the CPU quick enough then
this may cause your PC to freeze.

These are two of the main reasons why computers freeze so it is worth a look.

Chris

<><

I had something like that going on my computer , so try this :
if you have two units (two drives) (one dvd , one cd-rom for ex) ,
unplug the power from one of them , and check if this happend again;

Hope it works