CD Rom Drives Disappeared (1 Viewer)

[MarkMel]

Anyone ever have thier CD Rom Drives disappear from explorer? Both my CD and DVD-rom drive have disappeared from explorer and neither work. The CD rom drive opens but the DVD rom drive won't even open.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ken Chui]

Mark:

Which operating system are you using?

 

[MarkMel]

Unfourtunatly ME. It's the home computer, I rarely use it since I have a laptop for work.

 

[brentl]

This was happening to my sisters computer, so I took it out and threw it in my computer, it didn't show up there either.

It was a dead ROM drive.

Brent

 

[MarkMel]

I could see if one drive wasn't working but in this case it's two drives and they no longer show up in the directory.

 

[SethH]

Perhaps both drives are on the same IDE cable and that cable has gone bad or gotten loose.

 

[brentl]

You're right SORRY!

Are the ROMs on the same IDE channel?

Kinda like what Seth said

Brent

 

[MarkMel]

not sure, haven't checked that yet as I initially thought it was software not hardware related. But I will check that.

 

[StevenFC]

Like Brent and Seth mentioned, my guess would be that the ribbon cable is loose or defective, or the controller is, since they disappeared out of the blue. Or it it could be that you've got more devices than your power supply can handle, which can make things act squirrely. I would imagine that it's also possible that if one drive went bad, it might affect how the other one would perform.

Check your Device Manager and see what it says. Check the drives themselves in Device Manager, and also check to make sure the secondary IDE channel, under the ATAPI column, is set to IRQ 15, and that their is no conflict. Just look for any problems in general in the Device Manager. Check your CMOS settings as well.

If all cables are plugged in properly, and their are no conflicts, and they still don't work--try using them separately on the cable (be sure to configure the shunts on the jumpers properly). If one will work and another one won't, then you know your problem was most likely caused by a dead drive. If they work by themselves, but won't work together, then you might need a bigger power supply. If neither one works, try them in a different machine, and try a known good drive in the computer in question. If they work in a different machine, and a known good drive won't work in the other machine, then you probably have a bad cable or controller. Test the drives with a multimeter if you have one.

Or just go out and buy new a new cable and drives.

Hope i didn't forget anything. Always make sure that the software is not the problem before you poke around the inside of your pc. You ARE using ME after all! Do yourself a favor, get XP Pro.