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I picked up a Dell 19" Widescreen LCD yesterday. When I hook it up to my GeForce 6200's DVI port, my DVD ROM will not work. I receive an error in Event Viewer stating that the cable (to the DVD ROM) may be unplugged from the motherboard.

Anyone ever had a similar issue? Maybe I'm overlooking something simple here, but I found it rather odd that the two would be related.

that don't make a lick of sense to me, man. You don't have any weird DVD software installed, do you?

It's a older Plextor DVD ROM/CD RW, and all I have installed is Roxio. This is an XP Home with SP2 system. It's an Abit motherboard with, I think, a VIA KT700 chipset. I was certainly confused by the dilema, but I don't always have the best luck when it comes to hardware upgrades so I figured it was par for the course for ole Pagey.

so lemme get this straight - if you hook the computer back up to the old monitor with its VGA cable, the DVD drive works again? Do you have another monitor with a DVI port? The DVD drive isn't even connected to the video card physically.

edit: is it possibly a case of when you jam the DVI port onto the card, does the card possibly move around in teh slot and bump the IDE cable?

The monitor works fine with the Analog/RGB connector (as it supports both), yes. When I use the DVI connector, my DVD ROM won't read, and I get the error in Event Viewer. The graphics card is well secured, so I really don't think it would be the culprit.

have you tried throwing the computer out the window? That might be my next step.

At this point, I've sort of resigned myself to analog. I may research it further, I may not. I just wanted to get my fellow gerbils' opinions first. If it's been done, you guys have done it!

Is there some kind of an IRQ conflict? I know IRQ conflicts are very rare these days with modern hardware and OS that can easily handle shared IRQ's.... but if the DVD-ROM is using the same IRQ as the video card then it might cause some strange problems is the hardware is old. But something like this isn't something I have experienced or even tweaked the IRQ settings since the windows98 era.... But really... what a strange problem

I considered the IRQ problem as well, but I have yet to research it. I think, for the time being, I am going to settle for analog. I'm in the new box market soon enough, and when I pull the trigger, I am going to make some changes to the current box hardware and software-wise. If it continues to give me issues, I may research it further at that time.

I feel like I've stumped the champs. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, though.

Are you swapping while the computer is still on or when it is turned off? What is the exact event ID #? For giggles try using a dvi to vga converter, while not a solution I would be curious to see what happens.

It sounds suspiciously like nefarious DRM. But I have never heard of anything like that before. I can only speculate that there is some service somewhere that was secretly installed with some other software that, upon detecting an unsecured digital connection, disables your DVD-ROM. In other words... I blame them. Who are them? Maybe Sony, Macrovision, the RIAA, ninjas, the IRS, Comcast, etc.

You can try using Serviwin (it's great!) to disable services and drivers from companies other than Microsoft. Try Autoruns too (with the setting to verify signatures). Just go through and see what happens if you temporarily stop services and junk from companies you don't think have a reason to be on your computer, as long as you are sure they are not necessary. You may want to back up your registry first. And if you do something bad in Serviwin, like disable your USB drivers (which I did), you can put the HDD into another computer that works correctly and change the settings back from the other OS. In other words, it is basically safe even if you disable utterly vital drivers... but it is better to just "stop" them instead, so that if you mess up, when you reboot everything will be back to normal.

Okay, at home now with more info: This is a Dell SE198WFP. The box says, "dual connection options included: DVI-D with High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and analog". So this very well could be a DRM issue, unless I am misunderstanding what I am reading. Surely this is a cruel joke?

Pagey wrote:

Okay, at home now with more info: This is a Dell SE198WFP. The box says, "dual connection options included: DVI-D with High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and analog". So this very well could be a DRM issue, unless I am misunderstanding what I am reading. Surely this is a cruel joke?

Wow, that sounds like the problem. Without a secure digital connection, all of your methods of copying music or movies gets disabled. This is outrageous.

Not conclusive. I have a PC with XP Home SP2 hooked up to a Samsung monitor with an HDCP-enabled DVI port (on the monitor side). I doubt the video card side has HDCP enabled (but maybe it does). At any rate, it certainly doesn't stop the DVD-ROM from working. If you have HDCP on the video card and on the monitor, there should be no problem. It's only if you have HDCP on the video card but not the monitor that there could possibly be a problem, I would think...

Chances of the problem being related to DRM are not really high, it just sounds very suspicious, since it is exactly the kind of symptoms I would expect.

Well, I do appreciate the info, as it is an avenue of thought I had not previously considered. You learn something new every day!

It is most likely DRM of some sort.

If you are running the software and OS that came with the desktop. The odds are pretty darn high that Dell place those measures to "keep compliant" with DMCA.

To run protected content requires a secure, digital channel. That means you have to video that not only supports HDCP, but also have an interface that also supports HDCP = no VGA. The monitor has to be HDCP compilable as well. The intended side-effect of not having a secure, digital channel is the lost of ability to play HD at 720i or greater resolution and software that records the media will be unable to use protected content.

OK, this is a long shot... how is the ribbon cable to the DVD drive routed? Does it go anywhere near the video card? Since DVI is a high-speed digital interface, it is possible that the video card radiates more EMI when operating in DVI mode.

Sunspots man, sunspots.

MiB?

Pagey wrote:

It's a older Plextor DVD ROM/CD RW, and all I have installed is Roxio.

I stopped installing Roxio's old Easy Coaster Creator a long time ago and I will continue to avoid it at all costs.

Convert wrote:

What is the exact event ID #?

No answer on that yet?

This is just regular DVD, I don't think there's HDCP-type DRM there?

bitvector wrote:

Sunspots man, sunspots.

Whaaaaat? No way, man, it's got to be cosmic rays!

The Event ID is number 11, which states: "The driver detected a controller error on \Device\CdRom0.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

What happens if you boot up the machine with the monitor connected via VGA (analog) without the DVI cable connected to the computer, then connect the DVI and switch montor inputs with the PC still on? Is the DVD-ROM still disabled?

I'm not convinced about the DRM-based theories since all HDCP should do is inhibit the playback of protected material if a complete HDCP-compliant playback path is not detected. It has no reason to go around disabling DVD-ROM drives.

The only possible problems I can think of are a mechanical issue or a power issue. Mechanically, is there any chance that plugging in the DVI cable is moving the video card which in turn is pressing on the IDE cable? Seems very unlikely. Power-wise, does using the DVI connection turn on parts of the video card which are otherwise inactive, and this is causing a problem during the power spike at boot up when the system spins up all the attached drives? This seems even more unlikely. I'm stumped to think of anything else, other than the usual advice of trying other hardware (spare graphics card, spare DVD-ROM) to try to narrow down the problem.

Switching to DVI with the PC powered on leaves the LCD searching for a signal. So, that's when I shut down, hooked up the DVI, rebooted (monitor found the signal then), and found that my DVD ROM was not working. Powered down, switched back to analog, rebooted, and boom, DVD ROM is working again. I plan to poke around a little more in depth this weekend, as the kids are gone. In the meantime, watching BSG on the widescreen, even if analog, is just captivating!

Update: a couple of reboots later, my DVD ROM will work with the DVI output being used - however, I cannot play GTA: San Andreas (which is DVD based) when using the DVI output. GTA: Vice City (which is CD based) will work using DVI, so I'm not sure why San Andreas won't. I can view DVD based movies using the DVI output, so the drive is still reading DVD media. This is mind boggling.