DVD burner door closes automatically

The burner/s door/s worked fine before AHCI install.

I leave the external plugged in 24/7 (powered off) so to get the errors all I did was shut off the external drive while in Windows.

 

Which's your eSATA controller? Is it powered by one of the southbridge's SATA ports, a 3rd-party controller (JMicron, Marvell, Silicon Image, etc) on the mobo or a dedicated PCI/PCI-E card?
Maybe the DVD drive and the external HDD are powered by the same host controller (each controller powers two ports)

You should use the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature before unplugging/disconnecting the external HDD.

 

Think you should revert back to IDE and see if all your problems vanish.

Is HotSwapping worth all that strife?.

I also had various issues under AHCI and am back to IDE(until RAID0 when the new drives arrive).

Thats bad practice-the correct procedure is for the drive to shut off with the other hardware, under Hot Swapping

edit; with IDE it works OK to turn on /off anytime- not independently under AHCI

 

My eSATA should be the ICH9 SATA AHCI controller and is on the MB back panel. iirc, they all show up in the AHCI Devices Group in the BIOS.

Where can it be found? For some reason, it's not in the system tray except when I install something. In my old installs, I always remember it in the sys. tray.

 

As this feature mainly would refer to temporary drives, to be recognised as such by Windows ,like card readers ,flash drives etc, usually plugged into USB ports,you wouldnt get it.

Your external has effectively become part of the permanent hardware system,not just an external add on.

So you cant just unplug it without creating an error.

 

I know my problems would vanish LOL. This is insane and I'm not going to get into trying to fix it again. It just wasn't meant to be .

Ok, I thought I could turn it on and off at will. What do you mean I can turn on /off anytime in IDE?

Thanks . I was thinking of my old computer that had a card reader. Thanks for the great explanation which makes sense.

 

Actually,under IDE-you have to turn ON the external prior to booting up-but afterwards can be switched off without problems.

I found under IDE,performance was the same-but I had none of these niggling problems.

You can always revert back to AHCI/RAID afterwards,as Intel drivers etc are still in the system.

Actually you are QUITE CORRECT -under Hot Plugging,this should be possible-but for some reason looks like it isnt happening in your system.
My previous info really was wrong!

 

That's what I remember about turning on and off devices on in IDE.

Just one question about the IDE drivers. The last time I tried it, it asked for the IDE drivers after booting up. Where can I find them?

I can turn it on, but can't turn it off without the warnings. I'm not sure what the problem is. If I had a way to protect the 2nd drive, I would just install it internally. I know Sandboxie could block access to it while I was online, but nothing could protect it during installations. That's the only reason I keep it external.

OT: does SP3 change any icons in the control panel? Particularly the Display, Game Controllers and Maybe the Data and Time icons? They look different to me.

 

Just let Windows install the drivers from the XP CD.

Would think they are still in your Windows folder,though.


The icons should be the same

Its one of those inexplicable mysteries which we all know and love so much-seems Hot Plugging isnt working correctly-looks like the external is being identified ,as I said,as part of the non hot plug permanent system.

EDIT; did you reverse ALL the BIOS settings to do with IDE ? Drivers should still be available.

re ftdisk message;

One explanation could be its warning you that the system was not able to save all the (hypothetical )data due to a (hypothetical)delay problem on the external disk-in other words, when you disconnected.

Its assuming data was being transmitted when you terminated.

 

Thanks! I'm not sure what happened the last attempt a while back.

I think I may have figured that one out also. I installed VistaMizer to see what it was like but evidently a copy/update didn't fix it. It does modify a ton of Windows files though. I've restored an image and the icons are fixed. Lesson learned .

On the last install I did but iirc, I never got rid of them. I think it's when I was trying to switch to AHCI/RAID after Windows was installed. I had left both IDE and AHCI settings on in BIOS and when I switched back to IDE, that's when it asked for the drivers. I'll use the XP disk next time.

You could be correct. I'm not sure if the warning would have displayed as an error if there was a real problem. I do know there wasn't any data being transmitted unless the system was doing something.

 

What I'm saying is that "FtDisk, the Windows NT fault tolerant driver, provides the mechanisms for redundant data storage, volume management, and dynamic data recovery"- may have displayed that message regardless,as it sensed an interupption was made when you switched off.

So are you staying with AHCI and working around/ignoring the probs.-or back to IDE?

 

I really don't know yet. I also may be having a problem due to SP3 so a reinstall may be around the corner. I can't even play an old game I installed. Some sort of Visual C++ runtime error. It never happened on my old installs.

If I do the reinstall, I don't see much since in trying AHCI mode or the nLited SP3 cd again. I really need to eliminate all the variables and see if I can get a stable and error free machine before advancing. I'm going to try a few more things and reinstall with my OEM SP2 disk.

I guess were done here unless someone with the same rare set of problems and similar hardware posts.

Thanks to all for your help,
innerpeace

 

Good Idea-just a standard install in IDE and take it from there
(wont be much to discuss in the Forum anymore !!!)

 

I have the same problem.

I'm using a P35-NEO2-FR board with a ICH9R southbridge. Connected to the SATA-ports are 3 internal hard drives and a Samsung SH-203D DVD-burner. I'm also using the SATA-controller in AHCI mode.

The symptoms are exactly the same as on your system. No problem in the BIOS, but when running windows the drive door closes directly after opening it. The board has an additional SATA-controller on board, and when connecting the drive to this controller the problem vanishes.

Any ideas?

(OS is XP Professional with SP2)

 

Hi ix005 and welcome to Wilders.

I never did figure out what the problem was and just keep the eSATA unplugged when I'm not using it. I haven't reported it either as I wasn't sure which device or Windows XP SP3 that was causing it. I am glad you posted as it confirms it's not just limited to my system.

Are you saying you have an external HDD connected to the eSATA port/s and you have the Samsung burner connected to the bottom SATA7 (supported by Marvell 88SE6111) internal MB port and the problem doesn't occur?

Regards

 

Innnerpeace is the MSI expert,but I think the Marvell controlled port can be used either for eSATA or regular IDE,independent of the other ports.

So whats probably happening is that the CD drive is functioning properly when connected to an IDE port/plug,but doesnt like being connected to AHCI.

So just leave connected to the Marvel port-you should be able to run eSATA in any case from any of the Intel controlled AHCI ports.

 

> Are you saying you have an external HDD connected to the eSATA port/s and you have the Samsung burner connected to the bottom SATA7 (supported by Marvell 88SE6111) internal MB port and the problem doesn't occur? <

There are no external HDD connected to the eSATA-Ports. But there were three HDD connected to the same SATA-controller. However as described I changed this (moved the DVD-drive to SATA7), and until yesterday the DVD-drive was connected to SATA7 (as you assumed).

However, yesterday I stumbled over frequent activity in the system process. Every 3 seconds or so Process Explorer showed a cpu activity of about 3-4%. After a *LOT* of investigation and digging I was able to narrow down the cause: these spikes also appear in AHCI-mode only. This fits somehow to the strange behaviour of the closing DVD-drive door. Maybe some frequent activity on the SATA-controller (in AHCI-mode) causes it to close?

Screenshot:



I changed SATA-mode back to IDE and everything is normal again.

I think its safe to assume, that there is a problem with the AHCI-mode.

Will make some more experiments later.

Regards

 

ix005, I can confirm what you are seeing with the little spikes. I plugged in my eSATA HDD with it's power off and saw the spikes. They were about 1.95% on my machine. When unplugged it was 0%. For reference my only internal HDD and burner are connected to the Intel SATA ports.

 

Hi again.

You are absolutely right.

In my previous postings I ommited the fact that actually I have an external HDD connected to one of the eSATA-ports. Trying to avoid confusion, I dropped that information (shouldn't have done this *AND* should have read the thread more carefully) because it was always turned off during my tests (and I assumed it couldn't have anything to do with my problems in a powered off-state). But it seems now that the problem itself is directly related to the powered off device.

My findings:

IDE-Mode:
========
- no problems at all, regardless of which SATA-controller is used and regardless if devices are powered on or off

AHCI-mode:
=========
- when a powered off device is connected to the SATA-controller (doesn't matter if eSATA-ports are used, or the internal ones) you will see the DVD-drive door phenomenon (including the CPU-spikes)

- if the DVD-drive is connected to a a different SATA-controller (like the Marvel on SATA7) the DVD-drive door phenomenon disappears, but the CPU-spikes remain

- when the powered off device is powered on, everything goes back to normal again

- when everything is ok (all devices powered on) and you power off any SATA-device while the DVD-drive door is opened, the door immediately closes(!)

So I guess it comes down to the following:

* Don't connect powered down SATA devices to a SATA-controller when using AHCI-mode *

It would be interesting to know, if this could be reproduced on other systems/hardware?

For the time being I will keep my external devices disconnected, as just powering them down, doesn't seem to be enough. However that is not a very convenient solution, because I have some "hot-swap" SATA-HDD-frames, in which I could insert a SATA-drive while the system was powered on. They weren't used in my testings, but I guess they would produce the same problems...

Thanks a lot for your time and interest!

Regards

 

Intel has recently released updated drivers for SATA and AHCI:

http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/

The readme file for my specific version had quite a long list of fixes mentioning both SATA and eSATA; unfortunately none that said "keeps door open" or similar, but fwiw ...

 

No problem . I had a heck of a time trying to figure out what was going on. As you read, I even tried another identical burner which didn't help. I really got lucky finding out it was the powered down device. It is a shame as I specifically bought this MB for the eSATA .

I agree!

Thank you for posting your results and similar problem. I thought it was something I did wrong as it's my first build and I'm new to AHCI. If you do find anything out, please post your results.

Cheers

 

Thanks axial. I may have to give the new drivers a try sometime in the future.

 

I installed the new driver (8.2) today. The error seems to be gone. Will make some further tests later...

 

Good to hear . Keep us updated.

Also, what drive/s and burners were plugged in during Windows install and where. I'm assuming you re-installed Windows with the new AHCI drivers.

 

Awesome, had a question like this a few weeks ago.

thanks for the replies...