Save My Desktop - If You Can!

[gunter]

you could also put a meter across the 12 and 5 leads and see what they measure. make sure you put the neg lead on the power input to the cd/dvd drive. ultimately this seems like a grounding issue. Look around the case for any scorch marks. Also smell inside the case, motherboard, for any ozone smells. examine the caps. If you have a spare power supply hook it up to the drive, and run the cd independent of the case ps.

[gunter]

Pretty sure if you combined the ages of experience between hac, zap, len, dak, and Ceasar, they probably witnessed the birth of the electron. Much respect to these fellows.

[CeaSaR]

Janitor Tzap, that's why I said "save this for last". Absolutely best to have the OS load it properly the first time through. But if all else fails...

Fine-tune, have you stepped through the load process to see if something is amiss or actually missed? How about looking at startup to see if something was written there recently? What it sounds like is on startup the OS is bypassing the load of the DVD, yet when you force it by applying power afterward, it loads. Just a bit more digging might solve it after all.

CeaSaR

[Janitor Tzap]

Janitor Tzap, are you trying to say the procedure I followed was not enough? You mentioned completely removing the mobo
and shorting all the electrolytics with a 470K resistor. Before I disconnect everything and pull the mobo from the tower I
must know the odds of success. Is there at least a 50/50 chance this will fix the problem I'm having with my Pioneer burner?

I've mentioned several times already, there is no 1st or 2nd drive. Please read any of my previous replies. I have several
external hard drives, but the tower is configured as a RAID 0. XP Pro "sees" those two internal drives as one. They were
combined as RAID 0 in the CMOS setup, and the data entered in the MBR created a single hard drive from two identical
hard drives.

Please read about RAID 0 Disk Striping:

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/def ... k-striping

Obviously, I can't disconnect the "2nd" hard drive because with RAID 0 it doesn't exist! The only thing I can do is run
Chkdsk /f which is a good idea.

As I mentioned to CeaSaR, I started thinking about adding a delay circuit several days ago. There are many sites that
provide typical power consumption estimates for computer components. The absolute maximum for an optical drive
is 30 watts. At 12vdc that would be 2.5 amps. During idle it drops to almost nothing.

http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-con ... nents.html

A miniature 4 or 5 amp relay would be more than adequate for a delay circuit.

At this point, I've got two choices. Build a delay circuit that will permanently fix this problem with my "vanishing" optical
drive, or completely remove the mobo so I can fully discharge the capacitors. The former option will definitely work. The
latter is a complete gamble. What would you do?

As for Discharging The Mother Board............

Try my procedure again, but this time, leave it sit for 2 HOURS,
before reconnecting the power cables, and putting the CMO's Jumper back to the RUN position.
I should of mentioned this before, but many of the newer electrolytic capacitors can hold a charge for 20 minutes, and or up too 2 hours.
{My mind just isn't what it use too be.}

Sorry, I must of missed the fact that you have a RAID setup.
As for removing the 2 Hard Drives in the RAID configuration.........

I was thinking of trying to force windows into over writing the old drive table.

In your system, how many physical drives are there?

RAID (2)Hard Drives = C:\
CD/DVD Drive = D:\ ????
Floppy Drive = A:\ ????

@CeaSaR
Yes, I know.
But your solution is like putting a bandaid on it, instead of doing it right in the first place.


Signed: Janitor Tzap

[Lenp]

One sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome!

Here are some random thoughts.

I would get that drive out of the system then buy, beg, borrow or steal another drive to see if there is any difference. I know you tested the drive in another system, but i am thinking there may be a timing problem on startup when the drive and the system are not playing nice.

Does the system lose the drive during sleep mode, warm start , user change or is it just with a cold start?

Did you change the MOBO battery because it was losing settings or as a PM task? Silly as it may seem, did you try another battery?

I don't feel that the battery change is likely to affect the drivers and registry info since that is on the drive but it certainly can alter the cmos settings. I know bios sees the drive in POST but does changing the boot order affect anything?

Maybe it's a high risk but with a coin cell in a holder I do a power on battery change!

The drive delay is a get-er-done fix and probably will work but you may be deprived of knowing the real cause.

If I repeated some other suggestion, I guess I missed it while reading this unusually long forum string!

[fine-tune]

When you finish building a desktop, there are usually unused SATA ports on the motherboard. I tried the optical drive cable
in each unused port. The BIOS always listed the port number correctly during bootup, but it didn't fix the problem with XP.

I started opening some boxes in my workshop with old expansion cards that should have been tossed in the trash or recycled.
Suddenly, I had the solution! Provide the optical drive with its own inexpensive SATA Controller Card. Revision 1.0 has a
maximum data transfer rate of 150 MBYTES/SEC which is more than adequate for an optical drive.

I purchased a card on eBay for $14.49. Several dozen Silicon Image drivers on a CD were included with the package.

IT WORKED!!! YIPPEE!!!

I apologize for not returning to this thread sooner. All the brick & mortar computer and electronics suppliers disappeared from
my neighborhood years ago. I had to wait a few days for the controller card to arrive. Also, I've been overwhelmed with business
related stuff.

To anyone who may find this thread while performing a Google seach, please be careful when you buy a cheap SATA Controller
Card. Revision 1.0 (150 MBYTES/SEC) is fine for a CD/DVD burner. If you need extra SATA ports for a hard drive or SSD (Solid-
State Drive) optimized for the latest Revisions (3.0, 3.1, and 3.2) make sure the controller card matches your requirements.

You guys are the best. Thank you.