DVD drive not recognized at boot- intermittent

I installed a second IDE/ATA optical drive (Samsung/Toshiba TS-H552U DVD
burner) in the middle connector using cable select in a new Dell 8400 (WIN
XP SP2) per Dell owner's manual. I enabled the drive location from the
system setup menu. Usually everything works just fine.

Periodically though, I get a pre-boot error message saying the drive slot
isn't recognized and there is an F1 option to continue or F2 option to enter
setup. When I get to setup, the drive is in fact enabled-- though had I gone
straight to boot without going to the setup, it would not shop up in
Explorer.

Usually I just power down and reboot-- and all is well for a few days. Then
it does it again.

Any ideas to fix?

Doc

 

Best connection for a burner is on its own IDE channel.Or atleast set as
master.
Avoid using cable select for burners.
Try reconfiguring your system,hard drives on one IDE ,optical on IDE2

 

The exact setup here is the hard drive is SATA, the optical drive that came
with the computer was an IDE CD burner. I added the IDE DVD burner.

Would it work to set the two optical drives to Master and Slave rather than
both on cable select?

Doc

 

As you have a problem--try it.
Why have a cd and a dvd burner,your dvd burner will do both.Would make more
sense to have a dvd player drive in place of the cd burner.
Do you have different software(burn)installed for each drive?---some do not
sit comfortably with each other.