I have a Lite-On SOHW-1633S DVD writer, and it's been great. I haven't used it in a while though as it doesn't want to burn anymore. My question is why does BIOS show it as an ATA-33? I tried to find the ATA specs it should be at, but had no luck. I thought it was supposed to be ATA-100 at least IIRC. Am I going nuts? Any hints as to what to check? Device manager is clean or is this thing toast? Thanks all.

If it doesn't show up in Device Manager, Disk Management and My Computer it's more than likely faulty or it's device registers are not being read. A bit weird that it shows up in your BIOS though and not device manager.

Optical drives are generally the item most likely to go in a system judging by the number I had to replace for folk over the years.

It does show up in device manager, what I meant was that there were no errors reported. I was trying to revive it until I get my new one. Ya, opticals and hard drives, it's not if they will go but when. BTW, shouldn't it read DMA instead of ATA? I can't remember anymore.

Hmm, took the side off and reseated the data ribbon and now upon bootup, the page now flashes by so quick that I can't catch it anymore so something changed. BTW, BIOS reads it as UDMA 2. Weird as this is the second time an apparent ribbon cable issue has gone bust on me, maybe I'll replace the ribbon with a round cable. It also burns too now?

Great that you got it sorted. I've also had a DVD drive go recently but I've had it for about 3 years I think. It stopped writing too and stopped ejecting/opening if there's no CD or DVD disc in it. It still boots a OS from a CD or DVD so I've got it in my one system just for that till it stops that too.

Where I am now it's like 2 hours to go in heavy traffic to get a replacement at a fair price or pay ridiculous prices in the little town nearby, so it's got to do it's thing till have more than just that as reason to go into the city.

Yeh, this is usually indicative of ribbon failure

Glad you got it sorted