Operating System locks after swapping CDs

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From: Ron (ronturrentine_at_charter.net)
Date: 04/22/04 

Date: 21 Apr 2004 20:36:39 -0700

PC INFO:
-------------------------------------
Mainboard: ECS L7S7A2
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2700+
RAM: 1GB PC2700
HDD: Maxtor 6Y160P0
SOUND: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy X-Gamer (Motherboard sound
disabled)
VIDEO: 128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
NIC: Intel Pro/1000 T (Motherboard NIC disabled)
CDR: ATAPI 52x generic CD-ROM Drive
CDRW: Lite-On 52x24x52
DVDRW: Iomega External SuperDVD USB 2.0

Operating System: Windows XP Pro
Installed Apps: IE6, MS Office 2003, Visual Studio 2002,
Visual Studio 2003, and may other apps & games
--------------------------------------------------------

PROBLEM:

During any application install, my system will lock after I am
prompted to swap out CD1 for CD2. This is irregardless of the
application that I am attempting to install. After swapping the
discs, my mouse cursor switches to an hourglass. I can move my mouse,
however my start menu is unresponsive - I cannot even activate it by
hitting my Windows key on my keyboard. I also am unable to bring up
Task Manager by hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL. Eventually, within less than 30
seconds, even the mouse cursor freezes. I have to either reset or
power off the box.

The system lock happens whether I use the CDR, CDRW or my DVDRW. The
newest piece of hardware in my system is the Iomega SuperDVD, so I was
suspicious that it might be the culprit. I have updated its driver
with the latest from Iomega, but it didn't make any difference. I
have no problems burning CDs or DVDs with either my LITE-ON drive, or
the Iomega drive. Both burn without error or locking.

I seem to have no problem if the application is on one CD. Also, if I
copy the contents of each installation CD to my hard drive first, I am
able to run installs successfully from there. MSI seems to work fine.

Important Note: sometimes this locking happens even if I am not
running a CD install - I might just be playing an Audio CD, or playing
stored MP3's from a CD. Once a CD is swapped, though, the only
recovery from a lock is my reset button, or to power down my box.

I have all of the latest Windows XP Critical Updates and SP's applied,
and I have checked that my hardware (MB, Video, Sound, etc) has the
latest driver updates. I have also flashed my MB's bios with the
latest update available from ECS.

I am not sure of what else to do, except possibly reburn my entire
system (obviously a last resort.) I would hate to do that, but I have
some new software that I would love to install - unfortunatley, its on
multiple CDs. I either must resolve this locking issue, or is time to
reformat and reburn.

Any help would be appreciated!

Regards,

Ron

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