CD-R drive constantly being accessed...

abbyqueue · 03-05-2005, 06:58 PM

I recently rebuilt my system and transferred my old CD-ROM and CD-R drives into the new case. Everything seemed to install smoothly, but now, for some reason, the CD-R drive is being accessed every few minutes! Nothing's in there, but it clicks and whirs and all that. Then I guess the computer realizes there's nothing there, and it stops. This cycle repeats approximately every five-ten minutes. It will happen when the computer is sitting idly, and the other trigger is when I try to access something on the computer. For example, I'll open a program and it'll try to access the CD-R drive. The program loads properly and quickly. At first I thought this was merely an annoyance that I could live with, but then I tried to burn a CD the other night and the first one was interrupted because my computer tried to access the drive in the middle of the burn process, and the second one wouldn't start because I was informed that the drive was "busy" (being accessed).

A friend of mine told me to check the jumpers; I did, and they're set correctly (CD-R as master, CD-ROM as slave). He told me to set the BIOS to manually detect them; I did, and this appears to have slowed the problem down a bit, but not stopped it.

I've never come across this before -- I don't use this drive excessively. It is a few years old, but I find it oddly coincidental that this happened just in the new system, never in the old. It's an Acer drive, and their website doesn't support their CD-R drives anymore (that I can tell). I have no problem buying a new drive if it's a hardware issue, but I don't want to buy a new one and have the same problem repeat itself. Thanks for any help anyone can provide!

03-05-2005, 08:22 PM

Hi,

Seems that with your friend's advice you have pretty well covered it. Just make sure that you have the master on the end of the cable (black connector) and the slave in the middle (gray connector) of the cable, and blue to the motherboard. That is an easy one to miss, but you probably have already checked that. Thought I would mention it.

03-05-2005, 06:58 PM	#1 (permalink)
abbyqueue Registered User Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 19 OS: WinXP Pro	CD-R drive constantly being accessed... I recently rebuilt my system and transferred my old CD-ROM and CD-R drives into the new case. Everything seemed to install smoothly, but now, for some reason, the CD-R drive is being accessed every few minutes! Nothing's in there, but it clicks and whirs and all that. Then I guess the computer realizes there's nothing there, and it stops. This cycle repeats approximately every five-ten minutes. It will happen when the computer is sitting idly, and the other trigger is when I try to access something on the computer. For example, I'll open a program and it'll try to access the CD-R drive. The program loads properly and quickly. At first I thought this was merely an annoyance that I could live with, but then I tried to burn a CD the other night and the first one was interrupted because my computer tried to access the drive in the middle of the burn process, and the second one wouldn't start because I was informed that the drive was "busy" (being accessed). A friend of mine told me to check the jumpers; I did, and they're set correctly (CD-R as master, CD-ROM as slave). He told me to set the BIOS to manually detect them; I did, and this appears to have slowed the problem down a bit, but not stopped it. I've never come across this before -- I don't use this drive excessively. It is a few years old, but I find it oddly coincidental that this happened just in the new system, never in the old. It's an Acer drive, and their website doesn't support their CD-R drives anymore (that I can tell). I have no problem buying a new drive if it's a hardware issue, but I don't want to buy a new one and have the same problem repeat itself. Thanks for any help anyone can provide!

03-05-2005, 08:22 PM	#2 (permalink)
mark3567 Guest Posts: n/a OS:	Hi, Seems that with your friend's advice you have pretty well covered it. Just make sure that you have the master on the end of the cable (black connector) and the slave in the middle (gray connector) of the cable, and blue to the motherboard. That is an easy one to miss, but you probably have already checked that. Thought I would mention it. Last edited by mark3567; 03-05-2005 at 08:24 PM.