It is my opinion the installer should be a tad smarter in light of what's written on the installer GUI by actually polling the drives connected and if a DVD-R/RW or simular burning device is NOT present, the option should be ghosted out to avoid permanently breaking the IDE chain. While the installer interface says that a Full install is required for the new Skin to work, clearly that is not true in all cases or even desirable. Seems the problem is the 'Sonic Ripping/Burning Support' option in the installer. Just wanted to quickly add a follow-up to my post and include the solution. In the meantime, if someone could please share some thoughts on why WinAMP would be breaking the IDE chain it would be most appreciated. Such as the burning plugins, which the installer doesn't bother to check for compatibility before allowing the plugin to be install. However, this time when he installer asks what to install that he does a custom install by turning off anything DVD-ROM related.

I suggested, but not heard back from him yet, that he restore the drive from the image and re-install WinAMP again. The 'SKIP' button should be renamed to 'Click here to gray this button'.Īnyway, I have no idea why WinAMP would break the IDE chain after a reboot so consistently. The sad part is that the so-called 'SKIP' button does nothing useful, only after two long timeouts does it stop trying. One good example is at the end of the installation it apparently doesn't check very hard for an Internet connection and while there is a internal network, tries to connect to the outside world. On a side note, his computer is not on the Internet, and even with the obvious stuff in the prefs disabled, WinAMP apparently throws little hissy fits not being able to report back to whomever.

So the installer apparently breaks things that the uninstaller can't return back to a previous state moments later. If he uninstalls WinAMP after a reboot it will not fix the problem. So, clearly the problem is with WinAMP as it's the only difference. Install WinAMP again and the problem returns. Restore the image from last night, and everything is back to working correctly. After a reboot, placing a data disc inside the DVD-ROM drive locks up the entire computer that only a hard reset will fix. He tells me that as long as he doesn't reboot his computer after installing WinAMP, his NEC DVD-ROM drive works fine. Today, he called me and explained that he decided to try a newer version of WinAMP (v5.541) instead of installing his favorite v5.092 and it's been a nightmare.

Last night I finished installing WinXP for a friend, made a disc image and called it a night.

Winamp pro v5.541