Posts by Joseph Moore40

Taylor Campbell4 said:I don't know, I'm just hoping I didn't mess up the wiring, like maybe I accidentally set the jumper on that DVD drive to slave when it shouldn't be—though, honestly, I might have actually mangled the IDE socket because I tried to force it in backward, which probably deformed the pins a little bit. Or, I guess, it could be an issue with unstable voltage since I've got things overclocked. I'll just wait until I'm actually in the mood to crack open the case and swap that jumper out before I figure anything else out.

So, how did you actually go about testing the DVD?

Well, it was basically just a test of the media itself.
I grabbed this free little program called ImgBurn from the web. Once you get it installed and fire it up, it gives you a choice of drives if you have more than one hooked up. You just pop a disc in, run the test, and let it sit for a bit while it analyzes the media, showing everything on a graph.
Basically, you're looking for two lines—one sloping upward and one running horizontally from left to right. If those lines stay smooth without any breaks, dips, or weird jitters all the way through, then both the disc and the drive are likely fine.
If you see gaps, drops, or stuttering, well, then the disc might still be a dud.
In that case, you should try a different disc. If that one acts up too, or if it’s also faulty, then it’s pretty much certain the drive itself has finally given up the ghost.

Taylor Campbell4 said:Well, there are just a couple of things that tend to trip me up occasionally—it doesn't really bother me too much, though, and I still use it as my main OS (but honestly, I’d probably argue that Windows XP was more stable. That makes sense, I guess, since this system is way more complex and we're all pretty much just scratching the surface here. Maybe once we get a certain Sony Pictures update out, it'll be as rock-solid as XP). I'll figure it out eventually 🙂

Most of my headaches probably stem from the hardware side of things, because Explorer tends to hang whenever that one specific DVD drive acts up—I have no clue what the deal is with it. (The one that works fine, you know, the one on the IDE/ATA connection? It worked perfectly on my old machine, but now with this Sony drive, it’s copying DVDs at a snail's pace of maybe 300-500 kb/s, whereas the other SATA one hits about 12 MB/s...). As soon as there's a disc in there, everything starts stuttering. I probably need to double-check my "hardware" manual; it's entirely possible I didn't hook everything up quite right, seeing as both the PC and the OS are brand new...

Besides, people definitely don't struggle with Windows 7; if you just look at the support forums, you'll see plenty of issues, but I suppose that's just par for the course when dealing with Windows.

I had a similar situation with a Samsung DVD drive back when I was running Windows 7, and after testing it, I realized the thing was just defective. Once I swapped it out for a new drive, all those Windows 7 glitches vanished and everything has been running smooth as silk ever since. If you want a decent free tool to check your drives, I'd suggest Nero-DiscSpeed.

1. So, I went ahead and installed Windows 7, but things aren't exactly running smoothly—the CD/DVD drive is acting up and a few other features seem broken. I took a look at the Device Manager and noticed there's a question mark next to "other devices > SM BUS controller." I've tried hunting for a driver online, but I can't find anything, and even Windows Update isn't pulling it down for some reason. To make matters worse, my motherboard's driver disc won't even launch. Right now, I've got Windows XP running on my C drive and everything works perfectly fine there. My specs are roughly an Athlon 5000, 2GB of RAM, and a Gigabyte motherboard
.

Also,
2. does anyone know how to set up compatibility mode for XP?

Thanks in advance!