Well I just got a new computer, and I just recently installed a new hard drive, a WD 200 GB hard drive, but afterwords a few days after I installed it, my CD drive stopped working, when I put a CD in it won't play, I checked the cables and they all seem to be connected, and I checked for any updates for the drivers any suggestions on what to do?

- Does the CD drive show up correctly in Device Manager?

- Does it even spin up when you insert a CD?

- Does this happen with both data CDs and music CDs?

What software have you installed recently?

That's the 'biggie', because most such problems are created by software conflicts which stuff up the settings and Registry entries related to your drive.


But the questions asked by DMR are very important also, together with these:

What cable did you attach the new drive to? The same one as the CD drive? Did you correctly configure the jumper settings on your drives as 'Master' and 'Slave' accordingly?

Thats the weird thing, it shows up in the device manager, I can hear the CD spin, and no disc's work. And so big software has been installed.

1.

...Did you correctly configure the jumper settings on your drives as 'Master' and 'Slave' accordingly?

That's definitely a question worth an answer.


2. From what you've said, I gather that CD aren't "auto-playing", but:

Once you insert a disk and let it spin up, does it show up (and/or is it accessible) in Windows Explorer?

I set the jumpers as they said to d o on the hard drive, and the it is accesible in Windows Explorer, but when I clcik the drive a message coems up saying "Please insert a disk into drive D:/"

Your problem might not be with the OS or sftware at all. If you bought it new, then it's probably a WD Caviar SE series. In that case, the problem may be that you are overtaxing your computer's power supply. But that all depends on the computer that you bought. Typically though, a Hard Drive can't interfere with the CD drive in terms of read and write because the CD Drives are usually kept on the secondary IDE and the hard drives on the primary IDE. And a big Hard drive like that may take up more power that what your power supply can put out.

If I were to get a new power supply, how much power do you think it should have?

Also if it was the power supply if it didn't have enough power to run the disc, why would it spin up, and if it was over taxing woudn't the computer shut down or something?

Also if it was the power supply if it didn't have enough power to run the disc... woudn't the computer shut down or something?

More likely than not, yes. However, if your supply is "on the hairy edge" of being able to support everything you have installed in your system, all sorts of strange things can happen.

If you search the web you can find sites which list the average power consumed by different components such as drives, PCI cards, memory modules, etc., and from that derive a good estimate of how large (wattage-wise) your power supply should be.

Basically though- if you've stuffed your system to the gills with components, the average 250W to 350W power supply isn't going to be able to pull the load. Your power supply should, at the very least, be able to supply about 20% or more of the wattage that the combined average load that your components will draw.

**Also, most high-end systems today will use no more than 700 W maximum. And that's with the best of the best of the best. Typically, most components will have the wattage listed on them. Hard Drives, CD Drives, and motherboards typically use between 15-35 W; Fans and Floppy's are usually 12 W; Sound and Videocards are usually 25-100 W; and Processors are usually 35-100 W. All of these stats vary depending on the componenet's level of awesomeness.

If I were to get a new power supply, how much power do you think it should have?

Also if it was the power supply if it didn't have enough power to run the disc, why would it spin up, and if it was over taxing woudn't the computer shut down or something?

a 650w psu should be more than ample enough. dont forget have that particular drive as the secondary master and the hard drive as the primary master. do not ever run a cd drive on the primary slave else all weird and worldly prbs will occur:D

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