DVD drive in E6400 locks up, cannot even eject a disc

I sometimes get a strange problem with the DVD drive in my E6400. The DVD drive sometimes locks up completely. When this happens, I cannot even eject a disc by pressing the eject button. Windows XP hangs when this happens, at least any explorer window that is handling the DVD drive. The only way to fix the problem seems to be eject the entire DVD drive. If I do that and put it back in it normally works again.

I have seen this problem on a new clean Windows XP installation I have done on my E6400. I have used Intel Matrix Storage Manager drivers v 8.6 and from what I have read in this forum I maybe should have used 8.5 instead.

I have not seen the problem with the Dell-supplied Windows XP installation.

Has anybody else seen this problem?

Örjan

 

I've not seen this problem (Dell factory XP).

The burner is SATA and it is possible that this is related to the Intel matrix storage software. What SATA option do you have enabled in the BIOS?

John

 

Yes, I also suspect the Matrix Storage Software. I currently have it set to the default mode, Intel IRRT, which is some kind native SATA RAID mode.

I am getting more and more skeptical about running DVD drives in native SATA mode, at least in Windows XP. It seems that native SATA mode for DVD drives is not yet stable enough.

I am seriously considering buying a USB DVD drive to avoid problems for now and wait out a solution from Dell. It would cost me some money but I really don't want to spend a lot of time on this problem.

Running in IDE compatible mode would probably solve the DVD drive problems but then the ESATA port gets disabled and I really want to have that port.

Örjan

 

My E6400 was originally set to IRRT which annoyed me since it wanted to create a RAID set up when I booted with an eSATA HDD connected.

I changed the setting in the BIOS from IRRT to AHCI without any problem. However, I recall someone else reporting that changing to AHCI meant their computer would not boot. Intel explains this here. It's worth a try. You can revert to IRRT if you hit a problem.

It is possible that the Dell factory XP config includes all the required SATA drivers for the different modes. There is a way to manually add in different drivers.

John

 

Check its not the media itself.

This sometimes happens to me and the whole drive just dies and disappears. The system needs to be restarted to bring it back.

 

The problem has happened even with installation CDs I haven't burnt myself, e.g. the Dell Resource CD.

I have the Panasonic burner and it is updated to the latest firmware (v. 1.02).

I think the problem is caused by a combination of running the DVD drive in native SATA mode and buggy Intel SATA drivers. Using native SATA mode as default on DVD drives is fairly new and it still seems to be a bit buggy.

On my new media center I built this year I have connected the DVD drive to a SATA port connected to a second hard drive controller that is running in IDE compatible mode to avoid problems. Unfortunately the E6400 only has one hard drive controller so you have to select between native SATA and IDE mode for all drives at the same time.

Örjan

 

I will make a clean install of Windows XP on my E6400 quite soon and I think I will not use native SATA AHCI/IRRT mode but instead use ATA/IDE compatible mode. By doing this I hope to avoid possible problems with running the DVD drive in native SATA mode. I might switch to native SATA mode later when all issues have been worked out.

Performance-wise there shouldn't be any noticeable difference in Windows XP 32-bit when running in ATA/IDE mode. I will loose the E-SATA port though and that is a drawback. I will probably get an ExpressCard E-SATA card to get a working E-SATA port. These cards are quite cheap these days.

Örjan

 

I also had this problem after pushing on my keyboard a bit to see how much it flexes. In my case powering off the notebook, pulling the drive out and plugging it in again solved it.