6625WD Vista not recognizing dvd drive

We have now added this to the FAQ on the Danish site. We thank you for the information. It's good to see the community finding solutions for things that can help others

 

No probs, is it posssible to add this to the english website as well.

Now the only prob well not prob remaining is my fan noise ...

 

Blackbird, i can tell you we are working close with the ODM at the moment regarding the fan control on the 6x25WD line.

About the English site I'm working on getting the Danish FAQ translated into English so it can be put up on the site.

 

Thanks thats good to know

 

Hi, first post here. I had that very same problem, no dvd drive in Vista. Also, it affects Linux, too; both Ubuntu 7.04 and Debian 4.0 can't detect the drive (and believe me, i've built quite a few kernels and searched the web just to correct this...). Setting the Primary/Slave to None in bios corrects this and drive works in both Vista and Linux . (Note about Linux; Ubuntu 7.04 desktop requires also manual 'modprobe piix' to get cd work. This, however is a change in newer kernels, not bios problem).
The strange thing is that booting from the cd/dvd works and OS can be installed but after that it doesn't work. I gues the bios sets it bit wrong and every OS isn't very happy about that...

 

Hi,

As Spegelius correctly pointed out, the problem affects Linux too. But it is somewhat simpler to fix in Linux than in Vista (at least for me). When my Zepto behaved like yours, I quickly concluded that it must be a software issue, since the drive actually works if you boot directly from it (in such case Linux will also detect the drive).
Basically what goes wrong is that the BIOS don't enable the IDE bus at startup. Modern ACPI based operating systems expects the BIOS to have initialized timings and more on the IDE controller at startup, so they don't initialize the bus themselves. So although both Vista and Linux finds the IDE controller, they find nothing on the bus - simply because the bus is disabled. The simple solution in Linux is to boot with the kernel parameter acpi=off. Without ACPI, Linux will initialize the bus and find the drive. Unfortunately, bypassing ACPI removes quite a lot of other features such as power management and a couple of other devices will disappear, so it is not a viable soultion.
My own solution in Linux is to have a piece of software enable the bus prior to loading the driver. (Since I assume that this is really a bug in the Zepto BIOS, I don't think actually patching the driver itself is desirable).
I assume that disabling the bus in BIOS removes the IDE entry in the ACPI table, making the operating systems initializing the IDE controller themselves (which makes the DVD work). The unfortunate side effect of that solution is that you will have to visit BIOS each time you wish to boot from CD/DVD.

So, I don't have a solution for Vista, but I thought I might clarify what is going wrong.

 

I'm guessing here but might there be a problem with the ahci driver? Both in linux and windows? I'm not sure but linux didn't get ahci support until 2.6.19 (I don't know what versions ubuntu and debian uses for installation) and windows vista has a bug where when you enable ahci the optical drive might disappear. I don't own a 6625 but I just stumbled upon that information today and remembered this post.

Here's the vista hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928253

Hope that might be of some help for you if you want to try another solution.

 

The ICH8M southbridge present on the 6625WD has both an AHCI and an old fashioned (PIIX compatible) IDE controller. The hard drive is SATA and connected to the ACHI controller, while the DVD drive is ordinary PATA on the IDE controller. So I doubt that changes to the AHCI driver would do anything.

In my attempt to solve the problem with Vista, I attempted to perform my Linux hack within a boot loader which loaded prior to Vista, but quite unexpected, the IDE bus was actually properly enabled at that point. So it must be somewhere during the ACPI init within Vista and Linux that the IDE bus is reset (and consequently disabled).
Then I thought that it might be that the ICH8M IDE controller wasn't THAT compatible with the old ICH/PIIX IDE controllers, but according to the ICH4 data sheet, at least the signal mode register (the one I change to get the stuff working) is the same. But in either case, the Linux driver doesn't touch them, probably expecting whatever BIOS to have done that.

 

We have just received the Vista Hotfix yesterday.
It can be downloaded here:

Hotfix for Vista 32bit

Hotfix for Vista 64bit


FYI we haven't actually been able to test it as we haven't had any machines in the repair department with this issue yesterday, but it is the fix that was mentioned ealier in the topic. This fix isn't officially out until Vista SP1.

 

The update had no effect on my 6625WD - again for obvious reasons. The optical drive is PATA, not SATA.

 

Ungod, many thanks for that, the BIOS change got my DVD going in (Mandriva) Linux now. Can you detail this software hack you have implemented to enable the bus prior to loading the driver please? What flavour of Linux are you using?

Also, did you get the sound going? I have seen a few references to this chipset that says you need a kernel hack to get the snd_hda_intel driver doesn't work properly.

Zarx, although I run Mandriva, I tried Kubuntu just to see whether that would get the DVD going, but that wouldn't install at all - it just hung at install (version 7.04). Did you get that going or were you speaking from a theoretical standpoint?

Maybe we should start a Linux thread for this laptop.

 

I was looking for something else and came across this page at Microsoft.

I wonder whether the Zepto BIOSes comply with this guidance?

John

 

DiBosco, I got the sound working by loading the snd-hda-intel module with model=toshiba. If I get some spare time soon, I will patch the driver to recognize the Zepto laptop.

As for the _STM ACPI bug, it seems very likely to be that or something similar, which causes the bug. When I look at the ACPI code however (in Linux, you can read the data and disassemble it), the _STM function initially clears the IDE Decode Enable bit, but before returning, the bit is set again. Besides, I don't think messing with the IDE Decode Enable bit should affect the Signal Mode bits (which are clearly affected somehow by ACPI) - but then again. Maybe it does. I've noticed that the Linux driver must take special care of a weird behavior when BIOSes write to some bits which are NOP's (No operation) according to the spec. Maybe I should try touching the bit myself.

I run Debian btw., but my kernel is home-built - and my workaround is not distro-specific. The tricky part is that you must use the ata-piix driver instead of the ordinary piix driver which most distros use. Again, I am confident that the workaround can be ported to work with the piix driver, but I haven't looked further into it.

 

I had the exact same problem on my 6625WD with windows XP pro SP2... (so this is not a vista problem)
I changed the 2nd IDE in my bios but then it still didn't work, I then put it on "removable blabla" and then my computer wouldn't boot anymore, it wouldn't even go into the bios, so don't put it on "removable ...". If you did do that, the solution is to remove the dvd drive from your laptop with a screwdriver!

I then changed it back to "none" and now the dvd drive does get recognized!

 

Hi all

I have the following configuration on my 6625WD:

CDROM: TSST SN-082H
OS: Vista 64bit Home Premium
RAM: 4GB
CPU: T9300

This problem has also happened to me - ie: drive is not detected at ALL by Vista (can't see it in device manager and can't even see anything attached to the IDE channels in device manager).

I've been crawling all over the internet trying to find the solution - I'm CONVINCED this one will work if I can perform the same steps.

BUT there's just one problem!

I've upgraded to the new BIOS N015 - now where the heck is the option in the BIOS to set the 2nd IDE channel device to none??? Can't see it!

Should I just downgrade my BIOS to a previous version (which one?!) or what?

Also, what's weird is if am on the 1st page of the N015 BIOS and I hit ENTER on the CD-ROM, pretty much everything is disabled on the 2nd screen (I can't edit the values because they are 'greyed out') except the 'Enable 32bit transfer' option. Weird - what's the story with that?

Thanks for the help!

 

Never mind - I figured it out and FINALLY IT WORKS!!!

A HUGE thank you to the contributors of this thread for solving my problem after 2 reinstalls of Vista - I just could not figure it out!

Anyway, in case someone else has issues with following the procedure of setting the CDROM IDE channel to NONE in the 015 BIOS, this is how I did it.

1. Reboot, go into BIOS setup (hit F2)
2. On the FIRST tab, you should see the CDROM listed under the HDD
3. Go to the SECOND tab and set the IDE channels option from BOTH to DISABLED.
4. Go back to the FIRST tab - you will notice that the CDROM has disappeared!
5. Now go back to the SECOND tab and set the IDE channels option back to BOTH
6. Now go back to the FIRST tab (again!) and you will see that the secondary IDE channel should now read NONE
7. If it still says CDROM, you can now press ENTER on CDROM and you will be able to use the + or - key to manually change it to NONE.

Now ZEPTO when are you going to release a BIOS fix for this? OR put this up on your english support FAQ like you promised some time ago?!

 

Hey Jetpil0t can i ask a favour man...

My 6625 is doing exactly what yours was...
I have even installed the n015 bios update.

And like your second last post i too cannot access the second tab.

how did you resolve the issue in the end...????

edit: Vista 64 ultimate. All updates. Latest Drivers. DVD-rw = SN-082H v1.0, (Firmware Updated).

im pulling my hair out.
thanks in advance mate.
456of789

 

OK all fixed.

I hate finding a thread on a subject and the last poster not chasing up how they fixed it...

So for those in the same boat.
i had to remove my DVD from the laptop.
I then went into the bios where i was able to change the CDROM IDE channel to NONE on the second panel..
NB: It was already displayed as none on the first page as the cdrom was missing.. HOWEVER - You still need to manually set it to none on the second page as it is still defaulted to CDROM...

Save and restart. turn off once restarted. replace cdrom. and reboot.

This is basically the same fix as per Jetpilots post (so props to him also) however my bios wouldnt let me change the setting until the drive was removed...

all good from there...
Hope this helps someone as it did my head in for weeks...


456of789