Long time no posting from me, but. I have a new problem.

It's been going on for a while , and just ignored it since I haven't needed it.

My problem is my dvd/cd burner drive works properly and reads everything as it should.

My dvd rom drive does not do anything. The status light lights up when a cd is installed in it but it will not read anything.
When i go in to check the drivers all i get is the lite on dvd/cd burner driver. I have tired to install the driver manually, and automatically, with no luck. I have checked my error log, I don't know what laguage it is but I have no idea what it means.

Let me know what else you need to help out.

Does it show up in your Device Manager ??

No it does not show up in my device manager. The only cd drive that shows up is the cd/dvd burner drive. (and it works fine for now)
Nothing for the dvd-rom drive.

Well I decided to try to get more in depth in this situation. I removed both the dvd-rom, and the dvd-rw drives. I swapped connectors from the ide cable around. After this was done the problem was still with the dvd-rom drive. When I removed the drives I smelled both of them. (I'm a BMW technician and know what it smells like when a control module fries.)
The dvd-rw drive smells like a typical electronic smell. The dvd-rom drive smells more of burnt hair. Making me think the drive itself is faulty. What gets me though is my device manager nor my bios recognizes the drive at all. Is this normal when a drive goes bad for the driver to not be seen?
The drive is definately gettin gpower because it opens up and accepts a cd or dvd what ever it may be, but it will not play or recognize whats in it.

Thanks for your help.

It would suggest a problem with the data port or the circuit board controlling the data port.

Opening and closing; spinning up; lighting up would occur as long as there was power supplied.

Any noticeable pin damage or burn?

Fortunately these drives have become very inexpensive.

Try this:
- Open the Control Panel / double click the Add Hardware
- The wizard will ask if you have connected the hardware ?
click YES ( I'm assuming that it is still connected)
- XP will then search all the hardware installed & detected. Selecet add new hardware device, click NEXT
- XP will give you a choice to search & install or select manually.
Even though it was not detected the first time, it may find it if you search now. OR if you know the make & model you can select from the list.
- The rest of the process varies depending on type of hardware.
Just follow on screen instructions.
After completion click finish.

"I swapped connectors from the ide cable around. After this was done the problem was still with the dvd-rom drive."

If the problem still exists with/follows the one drive only, this suggests that your controller and cable are OK. (As jephree pointed out, power will operate the mechanical aspects of the drive if they're in working order.)

"... my device manager nor my bios recognizes the drive at all."

This (and the burnt smell) indicates that the logic board has most likely fried.

You can further test this by booting with a MSDOS bootable media and check the drive in MSDOS. If there is a floppy drive on this machine, boot with a Win98SE Boot Disk choosing "With CDROM Support" and check the drive(s) in MSDOS.

Insert a Windows CD into the drive(s) and at the A:\> prompt, type in dir/a/-p %cdrom%: (or dir/a/-p x: (where x: is the device letter assigned to the drive(s) during the boot process) and hit Enter. If you get a directory listing, the hardware aspect of the drive is OK, and the problem lies within Windows. However, given the incidents thus far I expect you'll get a "CDROM not ready" (or similar) error.

If you don't have a floppy drive you can substitute a MSDOS bootable CD. (Use the floppy as the boot "image" to make the CD.)

Originally Posted by bkdc

Try this:
- Open the Control Panel / double click the Add Hardware
- The wizard will ask if you have connected the hardware ?
click YES ( I'm assuming that it is still connected)
- XP will then search all the hardware installed & detected. Selecet add new hardware device, click NEXT
- XP will give you a choice to search & install or select manually.
Even though it was not detected the first time, it may find it if you search now. OR if you know the make & model you can select from the list.
- The rest of the process varies depending on type of hardware.
Just follow on screen instructions.
After completion click finish.

I have tried this with no luck what so ever. I have tried automatically, and manually selecting it. Nothing seemed to work with it.

Originally Posted by jephree

It would suggest a problem with the data port or the circuit board controlling the data port.

Opening and closing; spinning up; lighting up would occur as long as there was power supplied.

Any noticeable pin damage or burn?

Fortunately these drives have become very inexpensive.

I did check the pins on both drives, and on teh mother board. No pin damage has occured. There is also no visible burning of anything. just the burnt hair smell of the dvd-rom drive.
where might i find a suitable drive for a reasonable price. It doesn't have to be the same Philips drive does it?
The HP part number is 5187-1941.

Originally Posted by Dan Penny

"I swapped connectors from the ide cable around. After this was done the problem was still with the dvd-rom drive."

If the problem still exists with/follows the one drive only, this suggests that your controller and cable are OK. (As jephree pointed out, power will operate the mechanical aspects of the drive if they're in working order.)

"... my device manager nor my bios recognizes the drive at all."

This (and the burnt smell) indicates that the logic board has most likely fried.

You can further test this by booting with a MSDOS bootable media and check the drive in MSDOS. If there is a floppy drive on this machine, boot with a Win98SE Boot Disk choosing "With CDROM Support" and check the drive(s) in MSDOS.

Insert a Windows CD into the drive(s) and at the A:\> prompt, type in dir/a/-p %cdrom%: (or dir/a/-p x: (where x: is the device letter assigned to the drive(s) during the boot process) and hit Enter. If you get a directory listing, the hardware aspect of the drive is OK, and the problem lies within Windows. However, given the incidents thus far I expect you'll get a "CDROM not ready" (or similar) error.

If you don't have a floppy drive you can substitute a MSDOS bootable CD. (Use the floppy as the boot "image" to make the CD.)

This may frustrate you, but I have no idea what you mean by that. I don't know how to use the MSDOS function at all. I have no floppy disc drive on my computer. If maybe you can break that down into something simpler for me to understand I would love to try it, but if you don't wanna try to teach me how to do brain surgery over the internet I understand. LOL.
Sorry.