I have searched on a lot of forums and haven't found my exact problem addressed. I have a 2.8 ghz p4, 100 gb sata hd, 1 gb ram on a pm800-m2 motherboard which has 2 sata slots and 3 ide slots. I previously had an ide cd-rw attached to the system. THis system is 2 years old, and when I added the New SATA LITE-ON|LH-20A1L-06 dvd burner, the system hangs at post. It shows the new drives as well as the old drives, but it won't let me into the bios or anything, it just sits there. I tried swapping ports, same problem, changed cables, same problem. When i unplugged the new drive, and rebooted the machine, I was able to "hotplug" the dvd burner in and windows xp recognized and used it. However, when I rebooted, it hung again at post. I updated the bios and mobo drivers to no avail.
This is driving me up the wall. Please let me know if you have any suggestions as to how to fix this, as my only other alternative is to RMA the drive, and maybe have the same problem with the next one.

Have you checked LITE-ON's website to see if there is a firmware update for your drive.

I'm not sure that it's advisable to "hotplug" your drive. I guess if that works for the time being, and there is an firmware update for the drive you could accomplish it that way.

Do you have access to another computer? You could try your new drive in it.

Something to check out, hope it helps.

I chatted with their online tech support 4 times today, they never mentioned a firmware upgrade. After having me delete a lower and upper limit in the registry, which did nothing, i gave up talking to them. Their only suggestion was that the drive may be bad. I just don't understand why it would work when i plug it in after the system boots, but not when it's plugged in to start with. Seems like their couldn't be a conflict or it wouldn't work at all. and i'm no expert, but if the drive were bad, why does it work at all? I will check to see if there is a firmware update, but it is a new drive, so should be updated. Thank you for your help.

Are you sure the motherboard supports SATA optical drives on the controller you have connected the drive to? It would help to post all the parts you are using in your system.

I'm not sure what other specs you need. 2.8ghz p4 processor, 1 gb ram, 100 gb SATA hd, elitegroup pm800-m2 mother board link here --> http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/P [...] 45&LanID=0
550 watt power supply, ide cd rw samsung, ati radeon hd 2600 pro video card, onboard sound and lan. That's pretty much the system. It is running on windows xp home sp2.
I can't tell from the specs if it does support optical drives, it just says sata
thanks for your reply.

Looking at the manual for that motherboard, there is absolutely no mention of support for SATA optical drives, only hard drives, SATA I, first generation. This is an old motherboard, with first generation SATA support, designed and built before SATA optical drives existed. It is unlikely that you will get it to play nice. Although you say the system is only 2 years old, the components, ie the mobo, are older. That board was designed and built in late 2004 or early 2005, and unfortunately for you, it is a bottom of line old technology device that you will have problems with until you upgrade to something closer to current technology.

i didn't realize there would be a difference between sata hdd and sata optical, since it was the same format. I assumed it would be like ide drives. What's interesting is that the manual says specifically that it does not "hotplug" but it works when i do that. I will return this one and get an eide burner, any recommendations on something relatively cheap but good? thanks for all the suggestions

btw ECS is junk, get a respectable motherboard manufacture . you don't need to go high end just don't buy junk. just my 2 cents

If the drive is Sata 2 3.0 and your Mobo is Sata 1 1.5 it wont work unless the drive has a jumper to set it to 1.5.