2 questions about my PC problems, lol.

Question 1:
My computer can no longer recognize any cd drive that is connected with an IDE cable(havent tried any other connection because i dont have a drive with another cable). My motherboard is a Nforce4 SLi Premium. It was working fine for a while and then I stopped using it for a while, then I went to use it and now it doesnt even show up in My Computer or Disk Management or my Bios. The drive's LED light stays on the whole time and cannot eject the drive. when I disconnect the IDE cable and keep the power cable plugged in, it can eject and acts normal. It even works in my friends computer, so I'm thinking that I changed a setting that I wasnt supposed to. How can I get my drive working again?

Question 2:
When I start up windows, everything loads up really fast, EXCEPT for my network drivers, they load up about 5 minutes later. If I click on start and then connect to, the tast bar freezes. Also, once my Local Area Connection 1 and 2 start up, my internet is really slow about 3/4 of the time. I end up restarting and all of a sudden the internet is really fast again, untill i restart. But the network connections always take around 5 minutes to load up. I tried updateing the drivers from the Nvidia site and it didnt really seem to fix it, so I really want my cd drive to work so i can just use the motherboard cd. ANY help greatly appreciated.

I've got the exact same problem with a computer of mine, no idea how to fix it and ive tried everything. Anyone got any ideas?

bump, please help...

i really need to get my cd drive at least working, does anybody have any idea what the problem could be? even if u dont know 4 sure, give me ur opinions on what it can be besides a dead drive because i know it works in my friends computer.

Have you tried another CD drive? Like from another computer? The cables could be shot...How old is the computer?

well, I'm pretty sure it has to do with the IDE ports on my motherboard because every other cd drive that i tested has the same problem, i have even tried 4 different IDE cables and the same problem persists. Im thinking of just buying this piece ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatin ... ize=&Page= )that converts IDE to SATA and I think that should make it work just fine. The computer is only 3 months old and I built it myself. The motherboard is an ASUS A8N-SLi Premium and the power supply is 550 watts so I know thats not the problem and it did work for the first 2 months I had it. ALSO, I seemed to fix the network problem by installing the latest NVidia Chipset Drivers. Thanks for the reply.

So, is my best option to buy the part i listed in the post above or does any one know of a fix for this?

Make sure both IDE channels are enabled in you BIOS

yeah, they are both enabled and i tried both.

Have you tried booting from CD Rom?

Try installing your HDD (as Master) with your CD ROM in any of your friends PC.

The problem might be Windows


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the harddrive i am using is using Sata instead of IDE. I did try the booting from Cd and I think it froze the PC, ill try it again to make sure.

Make sure the drive is set to the right channel or cable select. For the master port on the IDE cable, it should be on master or cable select. For the slave it should be set to slave or cable select. Also - make sure that if it is on the slave port or set to slave that you have a master drive that is set to master.

Then make sure all the cables are in FIRMLY. When you load windows if you still can't see the drive. Remove and replace your IDE channel drivers for your motherboard. After you do that reboot a few times and try to find firmware for the drive.

If you STILL can't see the drive either a.) Your drive is dead or b.) your IDE cable is dead or c.) You motherboard IDE channels are dead.

First I would replace the IDE cable and try it. Then I would try a different drive or try the drive in another machine. If both those fail, then your motherboard is dead.

Or the motherboard drivers are corrupt or non-existant. Updating the drivers might help.

ok, thanks for the reply, I think i am going to uninstall the IDE drivers and reinstall them because i know that the problem is not with the dvd drive or cable. is it possible for just my 2 IDE ports to be dead and not anything else?

It is possable they are dead, but not real likely. IDE drivers? You don't usually need drivers for the interface itself.

nForce4 had some notorious IDE drivers. They usually don't have standalone "Drivers" but they are part of the chipset drivers and it is something that is possible to rule out before scrapping a mobo.

Most of the time you install the IDE drivers from the package to enable UDMA6 (where the default is set to UDMA5). Some older motherboards have drivers to handle ATA raid (which isn't used in desktop archs really).

I have had some servers where I have used ATA drives as cheap hot-spares. SAS has completely done away with that practice though. Because now you can just hook a cheap SATA drive as a hot spare. No reason to spend the money on overly expensive 15k rpm drives for a hot spare that may never be used.