theBlackman on 2/11/2010 at 21:43
I tried the Search to find my original thread. No luck.
So I think I may have located the problem. My DVD burner is stone cold dead. It has been acting up for some time. According to the system info it is functioning, but in reality it won't even open, manually or via the system controls.
I'll replace it and see what that does.
I think the unit has been dying for quite some time (it has a history of rejecting discs while I was burning) and I think, that the faults in the registry access to the burner was locking the system up.
When I have it changed out I'll let you know if there is an improvement.
Brian The Dog on 2/11/2010 at 22:51
Hmm, while the file I/O would definitely lock the PC up, I've not heard of it causing 100% CPU usage before. But yes, it would definitely lock up your PC if it is constantly searching for the disk. The general problem would be that Windows' multi-tasking struggles when file access is concerned, so it can't receive any messages from the user, or any other program to be honest. I think this has been corrected somewhat in Windows 7, but I used to get this in XP when a badly-burned CD-R was put in the drive and the DVD drive couldn't read it. Is the DVD burner IDE or SATA? Maybe they fixed this in SATA drives, since they get their own channel.
Good luck with the new dvd drive, let us know if it fixes the problem.
theBlackman on 3/11/2010 at 00:12
Brian thanks for your initial attempts to help me with this. I will definitely let you know what happens.
It could be other things, but I'll start with the DVD burner.
I have a really oddball system. It will accept 11 HDDs both IDE and SATA.
The DVD is an IDE system device, as will be the new one. I have a tendency to buy backup devices on sale so I have a couple to use that are new in the box.
At the present time the system is running XP2 pro, and has 2 SATA HDD and 4IDE for a total of 1.5 Tbytes, a CD player, DVD/CD burner (the dead one) an IOMEGA Zip and a Floppy drive.
Yes, I do use them all. :D
theBlackman on 3/12/2010 at 22:04
Brian, here is the followup, strange as it may be.
Replaced the DVD and the missing HDD reappeared, along with another one that had a duplicate name.
For some reason the dead DVD unit hid one of the HDD and when it lost one that I knew was there picked it up again when I installed the new DVD unit.
Weird.
