I was upgrading the firmware on my DVD ROM drive - Dell's version of the Liteon 163 - and the flash went bad; the system froze. After that my system won't recognize any drive on the secondary IDE channel. I've swapped the cable and same problem. I know that a bad flash can screw up the drive, but would it have damaged the motherboard as well? Thanks.

Hi,

Try shutting your machine down completely. Turn off the power and unplug the power cord. After a few seconds, restart your computer. If this doesn't work, you can try setting your motherboard to setup defaults and then go from there. Often, powering down will reset your machine.

Mark

(in reply to nelle)

Thanks- the IDE channel is now showing up in device manager, but not the drives - I connected two drives that I know are OK. Maybe I had better change the cable again.

(in reply to MarkA)

It's back - but my drives only show as PIO 4 (should be UDMA 2) and there's no option to change DMA mode in Device Manager - the Advanced tab is gone. It looks like the Intel drivers installed instead of the standard Microsoft IDE drivers, which I was using before with one of the drives that is now PIO 4. Could someone tell me how to get the Microsoft drivers instead - if I remove the Secondary channel the Intel drivers just install again.

(in reply to nelle)

If you are using WinXP just go into device manager, and roll back the drivers.

(in reply to nelle)

I reinstalled Windows and no matter what I do devices on the secondary IDE channel appear as PIO 4 - including a new NEC 3500. Now I'm starting to get desperate - just a few days ago, all devices on that channel were UDMA 2. I have uninstalled the channel, rebooted etc. - I would appreciate any help anyone can provide. Thanks.

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

Check your computer's BIOS settings and make sure DMA or UDMA is enabled there.

(in reply to nelle)