DVD-R Drive Issue, need help from the guru's ... read on

Thank you in advance for your interest in helping me.

Here's my system : Hewlett-Packard with Windows XP and SP2, running a CD-R and DVD-R on secondary channel, DVD-R on master connector and CD-R on Slave and both set on Cable Select. I have a Flash Card reader and it sows four drives under My Computer. Software ... Nero 7.0 Ultra and InCd 5.0 ... no other burning software save Sonic that's integrated with Adobe Elements that isn't actively running. No CloneCD, No Virtual Drives, No Emulation Proggy's. I bought a new Lite-ON SHW-1635S Dual Layer burner to replace the slower DVD-R on my system.

Here's what I did : I unistalled the drivers for the original DVD and shut down the system. While the system was down I physically installed the new drive and XP recognized and installed the drivers. I then went and enabled DMA on the device. This drive is on the secondary IDE Channel and on the Master connector and a CD-R drive is on the Slave connector and both are set to Cable Select as my original DVD-R/CD-R set-up.

Here's the problem : The new DVD-R drive will NOT read ANY disc (no cd-rom, no dvd-video, no dvd-rom , no audio cd) and it won't autoplay either. I try to access any disc under My Computer and it hangs and says "not responding", and I have to close the window and eject the disc in order to get my taskbar back. At one point after clicking on drive a million times under My Computer, I see it says "E:\ is not a valid Win32 application." I don't know if it's just this one disc but i will try others and will update the post. The drive does spin up and the light comes on for a few flickers and the name of the disc shows up under My Computer. Funny thing ... it just burned a DVD without a hitch !! The CD-R drive , no problem , works as usual. Another funny thing ... I put my system back together with the ORIGINAL drive and it did the SAME THING. After fussin',cussin' and damn near death to a computer AND a bunch of hang-ups, restarts, and farts ... the original DVD-R started working again, out of the blue really. I have no idea how, but it did. Hoping this new one does the same thing, but I have lost hope.

Here's What I tried : Tried uninstalling the drivers and reboot. I tried moving the drive on the cable and tried to isolate it (removed the CD-R). I tried the Master/Slave jumpers and their resepective connectors. Same result , no read. Did the same thing with the CD-R ... worked fine with any combination of jumpers/connector. Tried to update the drives firmware and it said "Couldn't update, see your vendor" So I shipped it back to newegg. The new one comes ... SAME THING ... no read of discs. Didn't try to update the firmware because I want to leave that as a last resort. I unistalled InCD to see if that was causing a block to read discs ... not the problem. Nero InfoTool doesn't show any problems. The BIOS recognizes it in the right location, Device Manager says drive is working properly (Yeah Right !!!) The drive does spin up and sounds like it is about to read , but no dice. I also tried System Restore to a point the day before when everything was A-OK.

This is giving me grey hairs !! How can I burn with the drive and it not read any disc ?? And what's with my original drive doing the same thing when I put it back in ?? Sorry if I was long-winded, just want to give the reader an informative view of what I am dealing with. I am no master, I know just enough to be dangerous !! Thank you in advance for any and all help ... a shout out to the guru's here (you know who you are !!) ... aaarrrgggghhhh !!! Pirate Morgan

Can you try the drive on another machine as this should indicate whether it is a problem with the drive or something else? My suspicions are the motherboard or updated firmware for the drive (going to be tricky if you can't get Windows to recognise it). I have intermittent problems with CD/DVD drives on my second machine not recognising disks and not being able to read them but I've put this down to cheapo/old drives or the motherboard (it's a SIS chipset). I never seem to have problems on my primary machine (NForce2).

Windows does recognize the drive. I would go along with the motherboard /BIOS update but why would my original drive do the same thing for a stint after I put it back in ?? It worked flawlessly for over a year. But I may try a BIOS update anyway and maybe a chipset also. Thanks for the thoughts .... Pirate
PS - I may also try the drive on another machine also , but not right away. TWO bad drives from Newegg ??? A long shot maybe, but I go back to the original drive issues after reinstall, doesn't make sense.

im guessing its something in your OS causing the problem, given the details.

Here's an Update :

Tried it on another computer ... works fine.
Tried updating the Via IDE Bus Controller driver and it still won't work on my system. Now starting to uninstall any and all software that I ahven't touched in awhile ... just for kicks. Please keep the suggestions coming, I'm desperate !!! Thanks for the input so far .... Pirate