(Another) computer problem

I had probs for a while with my drives, the burner was burning with faults but read discs OK and the other just packed in. So, I bought a new DVD burner and swapped it with the DVD drive leaving me with a burner that only reads and a new DVD burner.

Unfortunately the result on installation was the new drive is recognised but the old one isn't. Not much of a problem as I can copy discs from and to the same drive? No, both Nero and Roxio crash the PC when I open them, I have uninstalled and re-installed them but nowt seems to work. I've got loads to copy but can't keep copying to hard drive and then burning new. Any ideas as to what the chuff has gone on?

the best solution for some computer problems is to call the priest and to make an exorcism, cos mainly there is just a devil inside the machine, cheeers

Nah the best solution is just to wait for Cambo

Check in MyComputer>properties>hardware>device manager, make sure both IDE controllers have DMA enabled. Then delete both the drives in the same page and reboot. hopefully when it's forced to detect them together it won't fall over, and will configure them right. Only other thing I can suggest is swapping out the duff burner and puting the reader in instead, it's a broad as it's long, and not having a second SCSI emulation device ( All burners think they are SCSI) runing might just stop windows having a funny turn.

I never burn in WinDos ( apart from the odd video DVD from fucked windows video formats), for these exact reasons, it either works or it doesn't and if it doesn't you'll never find out why. At least linux tells you stuff like "the dye used on this disc is not the favourite of your burner".

If you've got both drives connected on the same IDE cable from the motherboard then you need to make sure that one drive is 'master' and the other is 'slave'. You do this by putting the shorting pin in the appropriate position on the back of the drive.

And don't be tempted to trust in setting one of them to master or slave and bunging the other one on "cable select", it rarely works right and never on burners.

What Oldblue says holds true for any pair of devices on the same IDE line.

Hoever, such poroblems are USUALLY visible from the get go by Bios fidgeting around at power-on detecting drives. Which gives me another idea....make sure BIOS is set to autodetect that drive ( this is hard to explain but try and stay with me......if you swap out a dvd reader for a dvd writer, it's possible, something on the mobo just sees "dvd" and never bothers to re-interrogate the drive leaving it with the same BIOS settings as the old reader.....however, these days windows more or less ignores BIOS and talks to hardware directly ( annoying bastard) So I'm not sure). Just make sure the drives detect OK and are reported right during power on.

Thanks chaps, can't make head nor tail of half of that but I'll give it a go. System Restore is only a button away.