Awhile ago, I posted a thread about how one of my DVD drives was acting up. (My Sony DDU-1615 DVD-ROM drive barely works at all and has persistent read errors in windows XP, yet functions perfectly in Ubuntu Linux). When the drive tries to read a disc, it seems to destabilize windows as well. I've spent the last few weeks trying to figure it out, but my troubleshooting has resulted in more questions than answers.
At first, I thought it was a driver conflict / hardware profile issue, but a windows reinstall failed to fix it.
Later, I found that disconnecting my DVD+RW drive (an older RICOH MP5240A that came installed in the computer when I got it) from the power supply resolved the problem in Windows, so the problem obviously stems from a hardware conflict of some sort. The problem obviously lies with windows, since both drives co-exist happily in Ubuntu. Simply disabling the Ricoh in Winxp's device manager didn't solve the problem. Interestingly, the drive worked fine during the windows reinstall process, so something in the OS itself is causing the trouble, but I'm not sure what.
I've narrowed down the problem to some sort of Windows-exclusive hardware conflict problem, but I'm still not sure how to fix it.
My main question is, is there some sort of Windows hardware limitation on having two DVD drives in the same computer? My DVD burner was originally paired with a Cd-ROM drive (That I later replaced with the Sony dvd-rom drive), so I'm wondering if there is some reason why the computer was designed that way, rather than mere cost reduction. Both of the original drives in my computer were Compaq OEM parts of questionable quality, so I'm wondering if a decent aftermarket DVD burner would create similar problems.
If windows is able to accommodate two DVD drives, I may just replace the DVD+RW drive, since it is old and only supports DVd+RW single layer discs. Can anyone recommend a good replacement in the $40-$50 range?
At first, I thought it was a driver conflict / hardware profile issue, but a windows reinstall failed to fix it.
Later, I found that disconnecting my DVD+RW drive (an older RICOH MP5240A that came installed in the computer when I got it) from the power supply resolved the problem in Windows, so the problem obviously stems from a hardware conflict of some sort. The problem obviously lies with windows, since both drives co-exist happily in Ubuntu. Simply disabling the Ricoh in Winxp's device manager didn't solve the problem. Interestingly, the drive worked fine during the windows reinstall process, so something in the OS itself is causing the trouble, but I'm not sure what.
I've narrowed down the problem to some sort of Windows-exclusive hardware conflict problem, but I'm still not sure how to fix it.
My main question is, is there some sort of Windows hardware limitation on having two DVD drives in the same computer? My DVD burner was originally paired with a Cd-ROM drive (That I later replaced with the Sony dvd-rom drive), so I'm wondering if there is some reason why the computer was designed that way, rather than mere cost reduction. Both of the original drives in my computer were Compaq OEM parts of questionable quality, so I'm wondering if a decent aftermarket DVD burner would create similar problems.
If windows is able to accommodate two DVD drives, I may just replace the DVD+RW drive, since it is old and only supports DVd+RW single layer discs. Can anyone recommend a good replacement in the $40-$50 range?