PCTech Forums

since a recent repair to my computer i have ben having problems with my DVD drive (sec master) and my CDRW (sec slave). they both worked fine for a day or two then i started getting an error at start up = "Sec Master Drive - ATAPI Incompatable" and neither of the drives appear in the list of system devices anymore. they dont even appear as a device with a propblem. they are just NOT there according to my pc.

Does anyone know what the problem could be?

Have you checked to make sure that the IDE connection are not loose?
The first thing that I would suggest is trying a different IDE ribbon cable, I have that happen to me more than once.
Is either of these drives recognized in BIOS during boot up?

I have checked all the connections and they are ok, I have substituted a different cable which is known to be working but to no effect. During boot up I get no messages. The pc manufacturer has inserted a chip on the main board and all that displays during bootup is their name. I have checked the BIOS settings and all the IDE drives are set at Auto.

When at the settings screen I have tried pressing enter on the IDE settings for autodetect. The system seems to detect the sec master drive alright because it inserts DVDROM as the setting which is correct. When I try the same thing for the sec slave it returns Not Installed which is not correct as that is where my CDRW drive is connected. If I then continue with the bootup process I still don't get any of the drives listed by device manager.

I've even upgraded my os from Win Me to Win XP but to no avail.

Thanks for your replies Restek & Gecko. Unfortunately still no joy.

The DVD & CD drives are no longer listed in the list of system devices in windows (they were before this fault developed) and if I try adding new hardware windows still doesn't detect them.

I have tried swapping the DVD and CD drives but get the same error. I cannot, at the moment, try the drives in another pc. They were both working until Sat and the the CD continued to work for for a while longer, and the fault was intermittent for a few days before becoming apparently permanent.