dissapearing drives

[Xadow]

Hello everyone,

This problem started the other night when a game began crashing back to the desktop. Comp starts freezing up, requiring a reboot. Comp freezes at one of the start-up screens, requiring a restart using the power button. This happens a few times. A boot menu eventually appears and I try safe mode. I get a screen of drivers being loaded, which freezes, requiring another manual restart.

After a few more restarts, I get a screen that tells me secondary drive 0 and secondary drive 1 are unknown devices. These are my dvd-rom and cd-rw drives. I restart, go into bios, and turn off both drives. The comp boots perfectly after this. So I restart again, go back into bios, and turn the drives back on, to see if it was just a stupid glitch. It's not, because when the comp loads, the drives work again, but the comp freezes constantly and requires another manual restart. So, both drives are currently off, otherwise I wouldn't be able to post this.

I'm running Win XP home edition, version 2002, service pack 1 with 256 mb ram and a 1.9 gig processor. I've run updated SpybotSD and updated Norton antivirus and found nothing. I have hijackthis and can post a log if anyone wants to see one.

Is this a fixable glitch? A virus or some other malicious code, like spyware? Or am I just going to have to download new drivers from the manufacturer? Thanks in advance to everyone who takes a look.

[keeyoki]

I have had a similar issue. Spybot nor Norton Antivirus picked up on what I am about to tell you. CLick on your start button and go into the run command. Type in MSCONFIG. When this comes up look into your startup menu. I found spyware and other things that were in my startup as exe. files. Disable what you do not want to start up when you reboot. Se if this fixes your problem. If not you mau want to reinstall Windows XP.

[Xadow]

Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a try. I've already reflashed my BIOS, emptied my NVRAM, and tried to download new drivers, all to no effect. So, anything that might work is greatly appreciated. Thanks again!