Question : Problem: Toshiba satellite does not recognize DVD/CD-RW after booting into Windows XP

Hopefully someone can help.  I have a Toshiba Satellite 2415-s205 that gives an IDE #1 error message on boot.  After calling Toshiba technical support and before they said there was a $55 charge for a service call because my laptop is out of warranty, I was told that it was a problem with the drive itself.  Being somewhat hardware savvy, I decided to test this.

I removed the drive and hooked it to may main pc via a slim to ATAPI adapter.  It was recognized as a slave device and operated normally, even burning several CD-R's.  Due to this I assume that there is in fact nothing wrong with the drive.  So I'm still confused as to why I recieve an IDE #1 error upon boot.

Part of the problem is that the drive is recognized in the BIOS even when it's not attached.  If I remove both drives (HDD and DVD/CD-RW) the primary device shows not installed, but the DVD/CD-RW is recognized and assigned IRQ 15.  The problem is that you have no option to change the drive option in the BIOS, So I can't figure out how to clear the BIOS so that it lists no DVD/CD-RW drive.  I've done a couple of things besides testing the drive in another PC:
* Flashed to the latest BIOS - no effect (same IDE #1 error message)
* Unplugged the CMOS battery for 5 minutes - no effect (same IDE #1 error message)
* Unplugged the CMOS battery overnight (12 hours to dissapate any charge) - no effect (same IDE #1 error message)
* Tried different DDR modules - no effect (same IDE #1 error message)
* Switched HDD's with a known working one - no effect (same IDE #1 error message)

I've completely assembled and disassembled this laptop several times in the last week looking for a solution, loose wires, connections, anything...and at this point I'm running out of ideas, anyone out there have any?  

Before I forget, this just happened on boot one day last week.  I had not made any software, hardware, or firmware changes. I just got a nice, "Hello...How Do You Do!" on boot.

Not that points really matter, but this one is worth 250

Steve

Answer : Problem: Toshiba satellite does not recognize DVD/CD-RW after booting into Windows XP

If you cleared the CMOS and you still have spurious values in there, I suspect either the CMOS is bad or the IDE controller on the motherboard is bad; both indicate that the laptop needs to have its motherboard replaced.  It doesn't sound like a cheap repair.