Wierd: MSI KT266A, WinXP, and a missing CD Burner

[EtOH]

I was hoping to wait for the Abit boards but I basically got a free motherboard upgrade courtesy of work and it was either today or never so I went with the only KT266a board the local shop had in town. It had be bought today so MSI is what I ended up with.

After initially setting the system up everything looks good. All my drives show up in the bios, the system boots, etc. Well the oddest thing has happened.

My CD Burner is MISSING!

Here is the configuration #1 with its results
Primary IDE Master = Maxtor HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Primary IDE Slave = Western Dig HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Secondary IDE Master = DVD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Secondary IDE Slave = Sony CDRW. Bios sees it, WinXP does NOT see it.
By not seeing it in this instance I mean it does not show up in Explorer or Device Manager (Under CD Drives or under Secondary IDE Chain).

So I swapped the Secondary Master and Slave. Config #2:
Primary IDE Master = Maxtor HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Primary IDE Slave = Western Dig HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Secondary IDE Master = Sony CDRW. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it in one place but not in another.
Secondary IDE Slave = DVD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
By not seeing it in this instance I mean it does not show up in Explorer or Device Manager under CD Drives, but DOES show something being ATA33 on the Secondary IDE Master slot.

So I the Via busmaster driver. Config #3:
Primary IDE Master = Maxtor HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Primary IDE Slave = Western Dig HD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
Secondary IDE Master = Sony CDRW. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it in one place but not in another. Via IDE Tool Sees it.
Secondary IDE Slave = DVD. Bios sees it, WinXP sees it.
By not seeing it in this instance I mean it does not show up in Explorer or Device Manager under CD Drives, but DOES show something being ATA33 on the Secondary IDE Master slot. The wierd part is that Via's IDE tool does see it perfectly.

So the question is why in the hell doesn't WinXP see the drive when it acknowledges it in 1 spot under Device Manager, and even the Via Tool can see it? Any ideas?


EtOH

 

[EtOH]

I need some help bad. this is driving me up the wall.

EtOH

 

[digitaltrucker]

Ermmm, this may be a stupid question. Do you have the jumpers for master/slave set correctly?

 

[EtOH]

yep

 

[rempe]

Did you install easy cd creator? Xp uses easy cd for the media player and will conflict.XP has issues with burners check out the web site.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Have you installed Nero 5.5.5.1? Nero has been known to make drives dissapear in WinXP. It happened to me. I installed Nero and "poof" no more CD drives..Had to re-install Windows.

 

[tazdevl]

Had the same issue with my Plextor 16X. The CDRW has to be the secondary master and the DVD secondary slave. Don't know why... but seems like it's standard for CDRW's to be set up like that. Are you just setting the jumpers as cable select? Or as master/slave? Try both settings if you haven't already. Cable select ended up working for me.

Any driver/firmware updates out there you can download? A buddy had some compatibility issues with XP and his CDRW. I think he tracked something down that fixed things.

As to CD Creator... they have a funny process for their XP update. Install EZ CD,don't restart, dl/install a XP patch and restart. dl/install the win2k update and restart, then reinstall the XP patch and restart. Then it should be working.

The other question is... did you do a fresh install? You can't swap out motherboards without doing a reformat and fresh install. Too many things hiding around, settings, reg entries, etc... even switching between Via boards you need to do it.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

As to CD Creator... they have a funny process for their XP update. Install EZ CD,don't restart, dl/install a XP patch and restart. dl/install the win2k update and restart, then reinstall the XP patch and restart. Then it should be working.

Yes..This is a pain in the a$$!!!!!! I just did it last weekend. But it does work though

Etoh: Try what Taz says..

 

[EtOH]

I don't use easy cd creator and nero has been on there for a while.

THe reason I think its a motherboard issue is that both drives showed up fine with my KT7A and teh CDRW didn't disappear until I replaced it with an MSI K7T266 Pro2.

I had another problem last night that absolutely killed me. I decided to flash the bios to see if that would help. I fired up MSI's update software, it updated from within Windows, said it went fine and restarted my machine. On the reboot I got NOTHING.

Warning.....DON'T USE MSI LIVEBIOS!

This board is going back and being exchange for either an Asus A7V266e or an Abit KG7. Not sure which yet, have to see what is in stock.

EtOH

 

[Scitex]

Sorry to hear about your bad luck I've got this board also and have been reading up on it over at the MSI forums. Seems that the BIOS that your comp came with has a bug where you have to disable the CPU temp warning in the BIOS to get your CD-ROM drives back. This is also suppose to clear up some other problems and is suppose to be fixed in the 3.2 BIOS. Good luck with the new board!

Regards

Scitex

 

[Tennoh]

Had this problem too. Solved it by switching from DMA to PIO mode on the specific channel the burner is located on. WinXP detected missing cd burner after a reboot. I think this problem has more to do with VIA hardware than a specific mobo manufacturer. I've read similar problems reported with different make vt266a boards.

 

[43st]

a co-worker had the same problem. Something about more than one on the IDE bus chain. MSI has fixed it in the latest BIOS.

Or so my co-worker says...

 

[vyrt1go]

hrm......i had a similar problem with my board (K7T266 Pro2-RU).....with my tdk 24x10x40.....heres the deal.....first you need to update the bios, if you havent already.....make sure to disable bios protection in the bios before you update......(actually, go in to the bios and select "setup defaults" and then go and disable "bios protection"......i think its in chipset features...not sure right off tho...).....flash the bios to 3.2......if you installed nero (which i did and thats when i had problems....actually because i installed 5.0.4.8 and upgraded to 5.5.5.1.....).....then you gan go in to system properties and roll back your registry to the date that you last had all drives in winders....at that point, winders rolls back all drivers as wellm, so you may need to reinstall some....if you dont have to much installed, re-installing winxp is not a bad idea....but before you do, i suggest setting both cd roms up as slaves....the dvd a slave to the boot drive, and the cdrw as a slave to the secondary hard drive (sec. master)....that will facilitate copying cd's directly (without making images) much better....images take way to freakin long.....then i would suggest the following link....if you want to turn off auto-run and all that fancy windows crap, you will find several different explanations as to how to go about it. tweakxp......if you would like further help, my AIM handle is vyrt1go

good luck

v

 

[EtOH]

Well I am getting a new board since it obviously had issues. The supposed "GOOD" bios flash that went to horribly bad after a reboot convinced me of that.

I am not sure if I am going to get another MSI or see if they will let me pay the difference and pick up an Asus A7V266-E or not, I just can't decide if I want to mess with another MSI. I will let you know.

On the PIO/IDE chain thing, if this board can't take 4 IDE devices properly then to me that is a MAJOR chipset or hardware flaw and it ought not have ever been allowed to be released to the public in such a state.

That whole LiveBios killing my board after saying it was a successful flash kind of left a really bad taste in my mouth, I am not sure I really trust trying to flash another board.

EtOH

 

[EtOH]

Just got off the phone with my wife and it looks like an Asus A7V266-E for me. I will let you know how this one goes.

EtOH