Topic awaiting preservation: CD drive problem

I have a LITE-ON LTR 40125S . All of a sudden, it won`t play music CDs anymore. It reads CD ROMs and acts like it is playing the music CDs, but there is no sound. The CD player shows up, track number, time count down, nothing else. I burned two CDs with this drive yesterday. Sourced form the second CD drive (a Samsung CD/CDR SW 206) which will also not play music CDs today.

The volume is maxed , I`ve reinstalled the driver, the other sound related systems work, (winamp, sounds attached to events, etc.). Even reinstalled windows (2K pro) over the top, and ran the windows repair utility from the installation disc. I`ve only installed two items in the last week, and both have been uninstalled.

My warranty is up , so the manufacturer won`t talk to me.

Any thoughts ? Ideas ? Suggestions ? The *get a bigger hammer* theory is starting to sound pretty good...

As far as I understood, everything works fine in your system except that your _two_ CD drives make no sound when playing CD. Is it right?
This is a stupid guess but have you opened the case and took a look inside to see if the sound cables are okay? How are they connected? If it was just one CD player not playing, but the two, all of a sudden, and only them, stop playing at the same time?
Weird.

Similar problem here so I'm not much help. But I do think I've tracked down the problem to the 'universal adapter' cd to sound card. I'm only getting the left channel but when I move the plug just enough to connect with the other pin... I'll get the right channel. So I figure it must be the connector. It's a piss off no matter what it is as I don't have a regular home type cd player.

You mean I have to look inside ?? ~eewwww~
Well, ok, I ll do it.
Thanks.

lol DB, crack the turtles back and get stuck in there!!!!!!!

just make sure you de-stat your self before touching the guts... just touch the side of your case a few times to discharge any static!

oh the shear pain! lol..

ok..here's my .02

it could be that you need the aspi drivers?? you can get them here.
or it could be a firmware update....though, that's not something i would try first...nor would i suggest trying it unless you know what you're doing cuz you could really screw things up and have to buy a new cdr/w.
hope that helps....

Thanks Lacuna, forgot to mention I reinstalled drivers.

nnaa..you did say you reinstalled the drivers....but aparently this aspi driver is....something better?? i'm not really clear on what it does nor why it does it....but i know that when i was having this problem, i installed these drivers and all was right in the world again.
i don't believe that it will cause any problems if you did go ahead and install them. and that link i posted tells you which files it installs so you can just go in an take them out again.
it's just a thought at any rate....cdr/w's are such a pain in the bum when they're not working for no obvious reason!!!!
good luck

Based on my experience, these third-party aspi drivers can screw up the system. I said "can", not "will".

db .. one question is it playing music from other things like games or websites etc etc .. if not it could be the speakers are busted! .. tsk tsk .. playing music to loud is a bad thing .. well maybe not cuz I love loud music myself

but do open the thing up check cables and drivers


.::. cEll .::. 513

First: Control panel/Multimedia check the Cd settings.

Second: Control panel/System/ Device manager "View devices by type" then select one of the CD's go to bottom of dialogue box and 'Remove' click OK. Shutdown system...(not restart) Start system... Windows will almost assuredly 'find' your CD as new hardware. Repeat process for other CD. Have Windows and CDROM disks handy and of course a boot disk. I'm bettin' that will do it cuz... the situation you described sounds to me, more like a software issue. Running scandisk won't hurt either.

You dont even need the sound cable pluged in to listen to cd's.

RazorX, yes you do.

The sound cable should go from your cd player to your sound card. It's what carries the analog signal decoded from the audio cd in order to output the sound. If you have two cd drives, then you should have two of these cables: one going into the main sound card input, and one into the auxiliary sound card input.

This was my first guess when reading about the problem because it sounds like this is exactly what happens when those cables aren't connected.

Also, the ASPI drivers could indeed help as well. Here's some information on it:
http://www.nu2.nu/aspi/
:edit: I'd recommend the Nero ASPI32 drivers. I haven't had any problems with them screwing up systems, but, of course, ymmv. :edit:

Here's a brief rundown of the related terms and acronyms:
In order to connect hard drives, disk drives, and other devices to the motherboard the American National Standards Institute came up with a standard called ATA (Advanced Technology Atachment) or IDE (Integrated Disk Electronics). All hard drives, cd drives, etc conform to this standard (that is, for the standard PC architecture).

Now, in order to communicate with this at the software layer, the Advanced Technology Atachment Programming Interface (ATAPI) specification was formulated. Like, if you boot a computer with a Windows9x boot disk, it will load the universal ATAPI drivers and allow you to communicate with whatever piece of hardware is installed on your IDE channels.

Now, the IDE standard allows for two IDE channels and two devices per channel. This isn't much, so the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) standard was introduced, which allowed for more peripherals (and its derivatives Wide SCSI, Ultra-SCSI, etc). And, in order to communicate with this at the software layer, you get the Advanced SCSI Programming Interface (ASPI).

Now, due to the complicated nature of all this, things don't always work out as intended. An example is Windows 2000 Advanced Server and cd drives. In order to fully communicate, you have to install the latest version of the ASPI drivers, even though the cd drive is on an IDE channel and shouldn't even need these drivers installed because the cd drive is technically using the ATA/IDE standard. Go figure.

Anyway, that link should let you check out if you have ASPI drivers installed and whether you need to install them. However, I am 80% sure that it's your analog cables. But, I've been wrong before.

*(All standards are formulated and officially adopted by either ANSI (American National Standards Institute) or the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)).



[This message has been edited by silence (edited 02-18-2003).]

Some CD drives have a built-in plug to accept a earphone or headphone jacket (small jacket). These kind of drives don't actually need to have the audio cord connected to the computer, as long as you don't mind listening to the CD only in the earphone. But you can still record digitally the CD, since digitally means that only the data cable will be used.

thank you silence for such a great explaination!!
i forgot about there being aspi drivers at the nero homepage also.....i've just always used the force aspi one.
i think that explaination should be saved somewhere!

Loopy loopy loopy loop. Yeah your right, dont know what i was thinking.