5700 Not Reading Disk Drive

Have you installed DaemonTools or some other disk image system?

XP Pro or Home? I've had a few rare instances where the I/O mode on CD drives in Pro can get set wrong during the install due to plug and play settings. If you have XP Pro try going to the System icon in the control panel and then open device manager under the hardware tab. Find your CD drive in the device list and right click on it and go to properties. There should be tab for a list of device options there...but depending on the type of drive that may or may not exist...thats the problem here..different vendors produce differing results in the System settings. Anyway if you see settings or properties look for an option for "transfer mode" and see if its set to DMA or PIO..and switch it to one or the other then reboot and try the drive again. If you dont see these options at all then disregard all this as it has no bearing on your hardware at all .

EDIT: Sorry forgot..it's not the cd rom settings its the IDE drive controller settings so disregard the references to your cd/dvd in the system manager and check the advanced tab of the secondary ide controller ...or primary if thats what your cd/dvd is hooked up to. On the advanced tab there should be a setting for dma mode....don't change it if you are skittish about what might happen though..if misconfigured and you have an ide hard drive you could cause the machine to not boot windows.

They should hold true for both but im not 100% positive about home because I just never use it. Check the properties for your IDE controller..probably secondary controller for the cd/dvd drive and look at that advanced tab and try changing the DMA mode to pio...just be sure that your cd/dvd is in fact on the secondary IDE before you go changing it. If this isnt it...it's probably a hardware issue.

Watch the boot process and hit puase if you have to to see the device list during boot. Your system will probably say something during the boot like

"Primary Master = whatever your hard drive is"
"Primary Slave = not detected"
"Secondary Master = cd/dvd"
"Secondary Slave = not detected"


It may not be exactly like that in syntax but it will be close. Just look to see which one your cd/dvd shows as being connected to..and if you dont see the cd/dvd at all showing during the boot on any of the channels....you have a hardware issue.

Yeah thats tough luck man sorry to hear it. It could be a totally bad drive or just a bad connection. Let us know if you get it working.

It can be the hd cables, the drive itself, or driver issues...

Have you installed or uninstalled any games that use starforce security? If so you should google the starforce removal tools and use it. Starforce security can make your optical drives drop out or not read discs.

Do the hard drives report in the system bios?

That's not good at all...the cd dvd should be showing as a detectable device in ide settings. The fact it shows on the boot menu is irrelevant...time to reseat or call AW tech support I'm afraid.