CD & DVD drives lost?

Tanglefoot · #1 04-22-2006, 04:05 AM

Hi, I seem to have lost my CD and DVD drives from Explorer.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

dsl2007 · #2 04-22-2006, 07:10 AM

Restart your computer and press "Del" at the startup to enter the BIOS setup. Goto "Standard CMOS Features". Check if your CD drives are listed there in any of the columns such as "IDE Primary Master, IDE Primary Slave, IDE Secondary Master, IDE Secondary Slave".

Tanglefoot · #3 04-22-2006, 07:14 AM

Ok I'll try that now.

Tanglefoot · #4 04-22-2006, 07:32 AM

Right, pressing DEL at startup didn't seem to do anything but there is an option at startup which says [F1 system setup] [F10 System Recovery]. I pressed F1 and I think it entered the BIOS that way. Anyway I had a look around on there and it listed the floppy drive and the master and slave drives but no mention of the disk drives.

Tanglefoot · #5 04-22-2006, 08:07 AM

Just checked the Device Manager and the drives are there with yellow exclamation marks over them. I tried uninstalling them and reinstalling them but it says the drivers are corrupted.

dsl2007 · #6 04-22-2006, 08:17 AM

Well, in the BIOS Setup page, the name (especially manufacturere and model no.) of your drive will be listed. I am giving you an e.g "Samsung CD-ROM SC-152G". Try locating your drive in the BIOS first.

Tanglefoot · #7 04-22-2006, 09:15 AM

Right, I've had another look on the BIOS screen and I can't see any mention of the disk drives on there. Under the Device Manager the drives are listed as Maxtor 6Y120L0 and ST380022A. Is this any good?

dsl2007 · #8 04-22-2006, 09:42 AM

Well, it seems you are unable to locate your disk drives in the BIOS.
I will help you out in this. Remember it is necessary because first I have to see if your drives are detected by the BIOS or not. If your drives are not detected by BIOS, Windows XP will also not list them.
1) Restart your computer, Press F1 to enter setup.
2) Goto Standard CMOS Features and press Enter.
3) Here all your harddisk and cd drives will appear if detected by the BIOS.
See if your drive name appears there. If not, try pressing enter on each option which appears there [e.g IDE Primary Master, IDE Primary Slave, IDE Secondary Master, IDE Secondary Slave etc.].
If your drive is not listed there, then most probably your drive is not working. If it is there, then Start Windows XP, goto device manager click on CD/DVD drives. Select your drive, right click it and choose uninstall, restart your computer, windows will detect your drive as a new hardware and will install the drivers automatically after a few minutes. If windows give any message in the installation of the driver note down that error and write the error in the next reply.
Also do not forget to write your drive names (harddisks and cdroms) and a bit of your information about your system in the next reply.
Well, I am sorry to say that I have to go now, so I would not be available now after this. However I would again be available tomorrow at the same time.

Tanglefoot · #9 04-22-2006, 11:08 AM

OK - I'm using Windows XP Home Edition.
The processor (?) is an AMD Athlon XP2600+

Also Norton System Works, Spybot, Ad-Aware SE & Ewido.

Not sure what else may be of use as far as my system goes, hope this is ok.

Back to the BIOS page the Floppy disk drive is listed as well as these:

Primary Master ST380022A
Primary Slave Maxtor 6Y120L0
(I think I was getting these confused with my disk drives!)
Seconday Master JLMS XJ-HD1665
Secondary Slave Hewlett Packard.

I tried the uninstall and reinstall on the Device Manager and it said something about the drives or drivers being corrupted. I'll do it again and add the error message word for word.

Tanglefoot · #10 04-22-2006, 11:29 AM

Error message as promised.

"Found New Hardware Wizard"

Cannot start this hardware.

There was a problem installing this hardware:

CD-ROM Drive

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware.
The driver may be corrupted or missing (Code 39)

Incidently, I can remember this happening before (a while ago) and I just went to an earlier restore point and restored the settings. Unfortunately I had to disable system restore a while ago and I lost all of my restore points, so I can't do it that way now. I must remember to make restore points!

snooker · #11 04-22-2006, 12:10 PM

Hi ... Have a look at this link below and see if it can help

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314060

....

Tanglefoot · #12 04-23-2006, 03:16 AM

I'm not too confident about entering the Registry

However I have had a look at the link you sent Snooker. It seems that by deleting some CD-Rom copying/writing software that this has come about. Well I had a copy of DVD Unlimited on my PC and recently Norton was picking it up as having a problem or two so I deleted it having never used it anyway. I suspect that this must be when the CD-Rom and DVD drives went "missing".

Also in the list of instructions it says to locate the "Upper Filters" and the "Lower Filters" - not sure what these are and I could only find one instance of the file mentioned so as it is I daren't proceed.

dsl2007 · #13 04-23-2006, 06:52 AM

Well, your BIOS is detecting your drives, means your drives are ok.
Now, windows is not installing your drives, means there is a driver problem.
I have a suggestion which requires a windows XP cd. So tell me do you have windows cd?

Tanglefoot · #14 04-23-2006, 07:30 AM

Hello DSL2007
My PC (COMPAQ Presario 6000) didn't come with any disks, all the Windows stuff is on a partition. I was toying with the idea of just doing a system restore so I pressed F10 to see if I got any options and I got a blue screen with a fatal error message

This I assume is a different issue altogether! sigh......

dsl2007 · #15 04-23-2006, 08:21 AM

Hi Tanglefoot
Don't worry and don't go away. I will suggest you something else in a few minutes.