Why does Windows think IDE drives are SCSI?

This is all in relation to my son's PC; I say this because it is not always clear to me what he has done in the past nor what he is doing at the moment.

He has two CD/DVD internal drives in a Windows XP Pro/SP2 system. Both drives are connected to IDE channels - each is configured as a Master drive on its own channel to cut down on conflicts. The first drive is an NEC ND-1000A and the other is a Toshiba SD-R5372.

Neither drive has - according to my son - functioned correctly for some time. The NEC drive will read and burn, though my son says the burning goes much slower than it should and used to in the past.

The Toshiba will read disks without problem, however if I put a blank cd in the drive nothing happens until I click the drive icon in Explorer and then I get an "Illegal Operation" error.

In my mind, all of this points to driver problems. He did have Nero 6 installed but we removed it early in the troubleshooting stage. There are a couple of other cd burning apps installed the names of which I cannot recall at the moment; neither of them is big league software.

Even though both drives are connected to IDE ports, Windows device manager insists on seeing them as SCSI drives - they are listed as:

_NEC DVD+RW ND-1000A SCSI CdRom Device
TOSHIBA CD/DCDW SD-R5372 SCSI CdRom Device

I updated the Toshiba with the latest firmware (TU56); the NEC already has the latest version I could locate, 1.01. I have uninstalled both drives in Device Manager and allowed Windows to re-install them numerous times. The drivers Windows loads for both drives are:

C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\cdrom.sys
C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\imapi.sys
C:\WINNT\system32\DRIVERS\redbook.sys
C:\WINNT\system32\storprop.dll

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi,

IDE drives are seen as SCSI devices if they are connected to IDE controllers, that use their own drivers and not the MS standard ones.
Also, some PCI-IDE controllers do not support optical drives well. For further troubleshooting it is essential to know, where the drives are connected to.

If the computer is equipped with Nvidia chipset, it is recommended to uninstall Nvidia's IDE drivers and use the standard drivers, that are built into Windows (XP).

Michael

edit: well mciahel beat me during writing......but still here my post:

Are the drives connected to the onboard controllers (chipset) or to third party controllers (PCI extension card or onboard RAID/IDE controller like Promise, SIL etc)?
This could give problems since some third party controllers found on most of todays mother boards have problems with opticals. Also Raid controllers found on many newer boards can give problems with optical drives. Mostly third party IDE controllers or PCI boards are installed as SCSI devices in Windows which could be the reason for your drives being detected as SCSI.
Try to connect the Drives to the IDE 1 or 2 controller (the ones integrated in the chipset). If you use a Nvidia Mother board try to use MS drivers for IDE ports as NVIDIA drivers were known to give trouble in the past.
Too many burning apps can also lead to problems so try to uninstall all burning apps and then only load one.

Why? I have always used the Nvidia drivers in XP x86, XP x64 and 2003 x64.

I think there's something wrong with this installation. Virtual drives can show as "SCSI CdRom Device" in Device Manager, but real drives normally don't. I seem to remember seeing this sometime and the drive wouldn't work properly either, but I can't recall what I did to solve the problem. Try uninstalling them in DM and reboot.

Nvidia drivers use/handle the IDE ports as SCSI devices (or did so in the past).
Windows as far as I know internally works only with SCSI comands and then converts them to IDE comands for use with ATA devices (I dont know at which level this conversion takes place).
This has lead to many problems in the past with Nvidia drivers.
pls anyone correct me if this is wrong as I think that I read something similar on the web......

Now some promise IDE devices are connected to a SCSI interface card and that is why these IDE ports are detected as SCSI in Windows.

The motherboard is an "MSI 915P-FR Combo" (http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p...o-FR&class=mb), one drive is connected to the IDE #2 channel as Primary and the other is connected to IDE #3 channel, also as Primary. The IDE ports are managed by an onboard Via 6410 IDE Raid Controller.

The drives were originally connected as primary and secondary (master/slave) on IDE #1 - I moved them to the current configuration in an attempt to solve the already existing problems. By the way, the hard drive is connected to a SATA port.

When Nero was installed, its' SCSI ImageDrive emulator appeared in Device manager as a third drive. I was wondering if perhaps the Neror drivers didn't get fully deleted and that had someting to do with the current problem.

One other thing - he was also having some inexplicable USB port issues which seemed unsolvable. Just to test, I installed a blank hard drive and loaded a clean install of Windows XP/SP2. Although I do not recall how the cd drives appeared in device manager on that clean install, they *did* both function normally.

Those IDE/PATA drives just use SCSI commands and are wrongly interpretated by windooze, because it has an ugly drive and hardware handling. lol

OK do not use the VIA RAID controllers but instead the Intel Ultra DMA 66/100 IDE controller integrated in ICH6 which should be IDE #1.
This also seems to be why the drives are detected as SCSI. Normaly the Intel UDMA controller via ICH6 should not give you any problems and would be the best choice for optical drives.
If this is not an option go to the BIOS and try to disable the RAID function and use the VIA as normal ATA (there should be an option for this in the BIOS). But still I would recomend to only use IDE#1 for your optical drives.

i get that too with my p35 intel mobo

Only in XP sp3 but vista it sees it as a ATA like normal ( i dual boot)


i believe this is why i cannot burn anything

Nope...

Use a proper burning app.

imgburn fails

Post an burn log so we can see what the error was, please.

Why SCSI, you asked. I was told that NT was developed on SCSI machines and there are a lot of references to SCSI deep within the bowels of the OS.

Microsoft won't tell you, but XP is NT 5.1.

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM!!




I 03:08:44 ImgBurn Version 2.4.2.0 started!
I 03:08:44 Microsoft Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600 : Service Pack 3)
I 03:08:44 Total Physical Memory: 2,078,048 KB - Available: 1,583,856 KB
I 03:08:44 Initialising SPTI...
I 03:08:44 Searching for SCSI / ATAPI devices...
I 03:08:44 Found 1 DVD±RW and 1 DVD±RW/RAM!
I 03:08:49 Operation Started!
I 03:08:49 Source File: Z:\ISO\kubuntu-8.04.1-desktop-i386.iso
I 03:08:49 Source File Sectors: 354,541 (MODE1/2048)
I 03:08:49 Source File Size: 726,099,968 bytes
I 03:08:49 Source File Volume Identifier: Kubuntu 8.04.1 i
I 03:08:49 Source File Application Identifier: MKISOFS ISO 9660/HFS FILESYSTEM BUILDER & CDRECORD CD-R/DVD CREATOR (C) 1993 E.YOUNGDALE (C) 1997 J.PEARSON/J.SCHILLING
I 03:08:49 Source File File System(s): ISO9660 (Bootable), Joliet
I 03:08:49 Destination Device: [4:5:0] PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-112D 1.24 (F (SCSI)
I 03:08:49 Destination Media Type: DVD+R (Disc ID: MCC-004-00) (Speeds: 4x, 6x, 8x, 12x, 16x, 18x)
I 03:08:49 Destination Media Sectors: 2,295,104
I 03:08:49 Write Mode: DVD
I 03:08:49 Write Type: DAO
I 03:08:49 Write Speed: MAX
I 03:08:49 DVD+R Reserve Track: Yes
I 03:08:49 Link Size: Auto
I 03:08:49 Test Mode: No
I 03:08:49 OPC: No
I 03:08:49 BURN-Proof: Enabled
E 03:09:01 Failed to Reserve Track! - Reason: Logical Unit is in process of becoming ready
E 03:09:05 Operation Failed! - Duration: 00:00:13
I 03:09:05 Average Write Rate: N/A - Maximum Write Rate: N/A

Umm...as mciahel said just over 2 years ago, "IDE drives are seen as SCSI devices if they are connected to IDE controllers, that use their own drivers and not the MS standard ones."

Try using generic Microsoft drivers, and disable reserve track [it makes no difference for people that won't / can't overburn, anyway].

Maybe also try dropping the write speed from MAX to a more reasonable 12x.