trouble loading windows

[waggabu]

Hi there,
I had fun getting past the first load, and now I'm getting a bit frustrated trying to load windows xp on my new machine. I have the CD drive set as secondary master and the drive jumper and connection to the motherboard check out fine. The BIOS are set to boot from the CD drive.

When I boot up with the XP cd in the drive, it spits it out and tells me that there is no boot drive detected, sucks the cd in, spits it out, and so on...

Could anyone tell me how to get past this step? Thanks...I'm excited to graduate! :)

-Eric

ASUS P5N-E SLI 775 Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Processor
Sony DRU-840A DVD+R
EVGA 8800GT 512MB Video Card
Western Digital Caviar 750GB SATA Hard Drive
2 GB Crucial DDR2 PC2-8500 RAM
Antec Sonata III 500 Case

[RickyTick]

Hey Eric.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the DRU 840A is a DVD recorder, not a reader. I'm at work and don't have time to research it right now. You might want to verify that. Sorry I'm not more help at the moment.

I'll get back to you later.

[zburns]

Go to the Newegg site. Plug in DRU-840A. You get the full page listing for the product. First page has reviews which claim it to be a "perfect" product, so to speak. The second review says "no problem read or write".

Click on "Specifications" at top of page. This full page very Clearly states it is a Read / Write device.

I have one still in the box awaiting my installation in my first build hopefully this week. Given your description about the problem; given Sony's rep and the quality of the reviews, I would tend to look at something external to the Sony drive itself as the problem. I would like to know what you think the problem is when resolved. zburns

[RickyTick]

Thanks Zburns. That settles that.

[shyster]

Not that this is really helpful, but have you already tried clearing CMOS and then resetting bios to default?

I highly doubt it is the issue, but you never know what will fix or cause a problem when working with technology.

By the way, by secondary master you mean it is running on an IDE cable right? By extension is your harddrive also running an IDE cable as first master?

Another thing you might want to try would be switching the location on the motherboard where things are plugged in. And as always make sure everything is securely connected, even if it means pulling everything out and putting it all back in.

[waggabu]

Thanks all. I have tried most of the conventional stuff. My BIOS detects the drive just fine, as well. A couple questions.
1) My HDD is SATA. Has anyone seen a SATA hard drive conflict with an IDE Optical Drive?
2) I'm using the ide cable labeled "HDD drive" that came with my motherboard. This is ok to use for my ide optical drive, right?
-Eric

[chunkylover53]

No, SATA HD & and IDE shouldn't affect each other at all. Unless both are IDE, there should be no reason that the optical need to be secondary.

Which is why my vote is to set the optical drive to primary master, not secondary. :)

[waggabu]

So, I figured it out. The black replacement cover for the dvd drive doesn't allow the drive to fully close in tight quarters. I took off the cover, and everything has gone smoothly. This computer is absolutely fantastic, except the system resets whenever I use the front usb or headphone inputs.