Question about Acer CRW 1208A burner (12-8-32)

Well, It should be plug N play, IDE drives are generally interchangeable.

The only thing I would try is.

1) Change the order of the master- slave. Make the CDRW you bought Master, and the CDROM as slave.

I hope this helps !

Also - Make sure the cables are in correctly - Pin 1 is the red stripe, Power cable put in securely.

Try to use a win98 bootable floppy and see if you can access both drives !

Good Luck !

Where is this "unexpected" error coming from?  Windows when you boot or try to access the drive or from your CD burning software (whatever that is)??

The CDROM (i.e. READ) part of an IDE drive is pretty standard and the Acer (which is JUNK in my opinion) is interchangeable with the HP.  So you should be able to access it as a CDROM drive without any changes ASSUMING you have correctly installed the drive (i.e. JUMPERS, POWER CABLE, IDE CABLE - I'd suggest double checking all of these!!).

The WRITE capabilities of different drive vary and the error may be coming from your CD burning software (which may be starting up automatically) and since it's expecting the HP drive and not finding that one, it's reporting an error.  I'd suggest that you UNINSTALL the CD burning software and then RE-INSTALL it.  You may want to check with the manufacturer's web site and see if the version you have supports the Acer drive.  It could be that the version you have is out of date and you need an update.

Thanks for trying to help guys. I have tried all of the above and even tried three different name brands of blank CD's.  I have installed 12-15 CD ROMS over the years, so I know a little about it.  I thought there may be something special about the Acer since I have never used one.  There really is something special about it; it's is junk.  I don't know why I let the saleman talk me into buying it.  I am taking it back and going back with a HP or Plexer.

I find it very STRANGE that you would have accepted an answer that DID NOT help you.

are you saying the Acer drive was faulty? I've installed plenty of these over the years & had none returned thus far. Don't understand why I get the points if you haven't solved the problem. Did my comment lead you to find the drive faulty or are you just giving up out of frustration ?

Regards

Dean

jhance agree with your "STRANGE" comment. don't mind getting points if I have genuinely helped but hate not knowing what the solution was if I did help or getting points as a "consolation prize".

jhance, I just gave up.  I wasted about four or five hours trying everything I could think of.  It is strange that I can replace the Acer with my old HP using the same cables and setup and it works perfectly, but when I put the Acer back in using the same cables and settings, it does not work properly.  I have switched the Acer from drive E to D and get the same error under D.  It is a generic error code(An unexpected error occured, try the procedure again)and gives no specific information to help.  It may be a faulty drive.

I made some specific suggestions and if indeed you read my comments and tried any of the suggestions, you didn't mention it here.

If you really did not get any help from the experts here, it would be acceptable to delete the question.  But just to award points at "random" is unfair to the experts who participated and especially unfair to a future user who may spend his points viewing this PAQ and find that what you accepted as a validated answer was in fact just an act of frustration.