MB loses DVD settings

[nlb3]

I have a Biostar MCP6P M2+ motherboard and an AMD Sempron 140 Processor at 2.7GHz and 2GB memory. My DVD-RW no longer works. When the computer boots up it recognizes it in the BIOS, but when I go to use it all of a sudden it thinks it's a CD-ROM and it doesn't recognize any disk I put in it. The drives I've tried are both Lite-On, they both do the same thing, and they work fine in my other computer. I've got 2 SATA drives, and the DVD is IDE. I've tried updating the BIOS with no help and I'm using the most recent firmware. The drives have worked up until now. The DVD is set to Master. Anybody run into this before?

[andyc52]

What ide controller is the DVD drive on? You can try going into device manager and deleting that controller. On reboot, Windows will reinstall the device.

[FingerOfGoad]

try new ide cables, as well as clearing the cmos and loading the boards defaults, my gues is the ide cable, they can just go bad all of a sudden out of the blue and leave you stumped.

[BlackJammy]

What OS are you running? Go to Device Manager. Is there a yellow exclamation point next to the CD/DVD description? Click on the CD/DVD property item. Is there an error code in the Device Status box?

[Mjölnir]

The first thing you need to do is try a bootable CD and a bootable DVD to check if the drive works outside of Windows. This will clearly identify if the fault is Windows based or harware based - rather than playing the guessing game. An easy way to do this is to try a Win XP CD and a Vista/Win7 DVD. Otherwise if you have access to another working DVD burner, just download the memtest86+ CD ISO and burn it to both a CD and a DVD. The reason you need to try both types of disc is that there are two lasers. One for each type of disc.

You'll need to set the BIOS boot option to boot from CD/DVD drive first.

If it doesn't boot, there's a problem with the drive, the cables to it or the controller on the motherboard - in order of likeliness.

If it does boot with both CD and DVD, it's a Windows issue. There are two common faults that I know of which can cause this behaviour. In both cases the drive can appear to be fine in Device manager.

The first thing to do is see if it's running at DMA Mode 2 or higher. If it's on DMA Mode 1 or PIO, this sort of problem can occur. You can check this in Device Manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers or SCSI and RAID Controllers. Open each of the Channels (eg. Primary IDE Channel) until you find one with the DVD drive listed. For the IDE Channels, it's listed under the "Advanced Settings" tab. If it's on a SATA controller, the location of this setting may be in a different tab or may not be listed at all. Let us know if this is the case and I'll post the fix.

The more common cause is this:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

[nlb3]

Thanks for all these suggestions. I'll try them. One thing I can say is it won't boot to either DVD or CD and it is set in the BIOS to boot there first. I tried clearing the CMOS and that didn't help either. I also tried a regular CD drive and it did the same thing. I will try a different cable and let you all know. Thanks again

[BlackJammy]

Originally Posted by nlb3

I have a Biostar MCP6P M2+ motherboard and an AMD Sempron 140 Processor at 2.7GHz and 2GB memory. My DVD-RW no longer works. When the computer boots up it recognizes it in the BIOS, but when I go to use it all of a sudden it thinks it's a CD-ROM and it doesn't recognize any disk I put in it. The drives I've tried are both Lite-On, they both do the same thing, and they work fine in my other computer. I've got 2 SATA drives, and the DVD is IDE. I've tried updating the BIOS with no help and I'm using the most recent firmware. The drives have worked up until now. The DVD is set to Master. Anybody run into this before?

So were you able to fix your problems? What was the solution(s)?