I recently installed a new CDRW drive in an XP Home SP2(fully updated) machine. I now have the 'C' HD as 'master' and a DVD drive as 'slave' on the primary IDE. And I have a 'D' HD as 'master' and the new CDRW drive as 'slave' on the secondary IDE. All are set for 'cable selection'.

The BIOS sees all the drives correctly. Windows XP 'system information' sees the drives correctly with the DVD as 'E' drive and the CDRW as 'F' drive. The device manager sees all the drives and indicates proper operation. The ' My Computer' and 'Windows Explorer' only acknowledges the CDRW drive and inaccurately indicates it is the 'E' drive rather than the 'F' drive. Therefore, I can not get to the DVD drive through Windows. I have tried with disks both in and out of both drives without any difference.

Through the 'Command Prompt' I can get to both drives and use them.

If I physically disconnect the CDRW from the system, then 'My Computer' and 'Windows Explorer' will acknowledge the DVD drive as the 'E' drive. All other combinations I have tried have resulted in the DVD not being acknowledged.

I have the same setup (except for the manufacturer of the DVD) in another machine and have no problems.

Hardware Details:

Soyo SY-K7VMP2 MB , Athlon XP 2400, 512 MB PC2100 DDR 266MHz, ATI Radeon 9200, LiteOn DVD-ROM, Sony CDRW, Acer LCD, 2 - 40GB Western Digital HD

Since all of the hardware indicators are correct, this appears to be a problem within Windows XP. From the days of DOS, it almost seems like an 'environment' setting is limiting the number of drives being acknowledged. Any ideas on what might be causing this problem and how to solve it?

Thanks

Tom Mayer

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