Optical drives not working

[terlynn4]

This is the third computer I have built so I'm no expert in this area but I do have a pretty good understanding of what I'm doing (usually). Things have gone smoothly this time around, until it came time to install the OS. Then I realized that the optical drives (I have one DVD+R/etc. and one ordinary DVD-ROM) are not working. They will open/close, but they are not recognized in the BIOS or when trying to boot to a CD. I have swapped out the IDE ribbon and the molex cables, tried every possible combination of jumper settings (currently I have the DVD+R as master and the DVD-ROM as slave), and also tried replacing the drives with known a good drive from my other PC (still doesn't work). I have removed everything except the optical drive (minimum post plus one optical drive), no luck. I have explored the BIOS thoroughly... in the "drive config" area it ONLY shows options for the hard drive, and in the "boot sequence" area it shows optical drives first, but says there are no optical drives found. There is nothing else that even remotely refers to optical drives in the BIOS.

So now I'm out of ideas and I was hoping someone else had something to suggest. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

~Teresa~

[Rob]

Hi, Teresa:

It sounds like you've done a really good troubleshooting. You can take a look at this link to see if it helps:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320553

It could be that the IDE controller is bad. Try moving the optical drives to the other IDE controller just to see if the BIOS recognizes them. Leave the hard drives disconnected.

[terlynn4]

It could possibly be the IDE controller, that's one thing I didn't think of. The problem is, this board only has one IDE controller on it so I can't troubleshoot that very easily. Most of the newest boards for Core 2 Duo don't even HAVE IDE controllers because they all use SATA for hard drives now. I suppose I could call tech support and probably end up having a new board sent to me, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to resort to that. I'm not sure why I didn't just buy SATA optical drives anyway... anyone know if there are IDE to SATA adapters I could buy?

Rob, I took a look at the site you sent. Unfortunately I don't have an OS installed yet so it can't be a Windows driver issue. When I do get an OS installed it won't be Windows anyway (I'm a Linux user when I have the choice) and I'll likely be installing drivers manually so hopefully it still won't be an issue.

[Rob]

I'm sure there are PCI cards that provide an IDE connection.

[terlynn4]

Thanks Rob, I just looked that up and found several to choose from. Sounds like something that will work!

[Highwrath]

I am having the same problem with bios not recognizing the ide drives. Did the pci card solution solve the problem? If so, which card did you go with?

Hate to use a pci slot for this purpose, I really should have gone sata with all my drives, oh well .. live and learn.

[koganinja]

you made sure that the socket on the mobo is not a hard drive only and not for optical ???? eg evga 680i is only for hard drives if you put optics in the ide slot when burning or playing data the thedrive will act like a hard drive every time you try and access some thing