Shoutbox

Ok, sounds simple; it's not compatible... So let me explain

I was updating to Vista from XP to try and stop my friend from downloading spyware. After updating he calls me the next day to say his DVD drive isn't working. I go up and try out my drive from my dead PC that is definitely compatible with Vista. It still doesn't work. I assumed it would be the ribbon cable (it could have caught in one of the fans) but I couldn't test it straight away because the HDD is SATA2. So I come home and get one of my IDE cables, but it still doesn't work, not even showing up in the BIOS using the auto-detect.

So I decided to roll him back to XP to see if it is just a Vista issue (which I highly doubt anyway). Obviously though, he doesn't have a DVD drive now to install from.

So, question 1: Any ideas what would suddenly cause it to stop registering drives

and

question 2: just in case, how can I get it back to XP (I don't care about losing data by the way, there is not much on there at this point

The BIOS is independent from the OS. If the BIOS doesn't detect the drive (but did detect it before) i assume the drive is somehow broken. Can you try the DVD drive in another machine?

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Originally posted by MenthiX
The BIOS is independent from the OS. If the BIOS doesn't detect the drive (but did detect it before) i assume the drive is somehow broken. Can you try the DVD drive in another machine?

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I know the BIOS is independant which is why it's so unusual. The drive I replaced it with it with DID work in my PC with Vista so I don't think thats it either. The chances of the two drives being broke are slim...

IDE controller on the board? Jumper settings on the drive itself?

Used different IDE sockets on the board and tried differnet combinations of jumper settings. I can't see any conceivable reason for it not to work

Make sure the onboard IDE port the drive is connected to hasn't somehow become disabled in BIOS setup.  Does it it show up in Device Manager?

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Originally posted by SpunkyLoveMuff
I was updating to Vista from XP to try and stop my friend from downloading spyware.

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Fail.  Upgrade him to OS X instead.

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Originally posted by Adeptus
Fail.  Upgrade him to OS X instead.

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He can barely use a PC and he's been using them since Win98 OSX would just blow his mind. Plus he mainly downloads films and burns them so it's easier to keep him using uTorrent and WinAviConverter lol

Hmmm... I checked through the BIOS (yesterday... or the day before, depends if you class today as yesterday or tomorrow ) and didn't see any method of turning the IDE ports off

shouldn't be any of those since it worked with xp installed, put a hard disk with xp on it as the master and see if the drives work then