CD-ROM & DVD-ROM drives suddenly do not appear under "My Computer" ? What's wrong? (1 Viewer)

[Michael D. Bunting]

Under the Device manager for both my CD-ROm (Sony CD-Burner) and DVD-ROM (Plextor DVD Burner), they both have a yellow exclamation point by each device. In the details it says that there could be a problem with the registry for these devices.

I have uninstalled them both and re-installed them both numerous times. But the same thing is still going on with both of them though.

Any ideas for me?

I plan on physically removing the drives here in a couple minutes, and trying out a spare cd-rom drive I have lying around. If that doesn't work, looks like I'll be re-formatting my HD and re-installing Windows XP Pro all morning :frowning:

This is on my HTPC, which was just recently built 2 months ago. Can a virus disable devices?? What a mess!

 

[Glenn Overholt]

All the virus has to do is to alter the program that searchers for your drives when you boot up. A much easier task.

If you haven't done it yet, just pull the ribbon cable instead of removing it. (maybe I misunderstood that) I have set 'new' drives on top of drives that are mounted to test them.

You might want to run through your bios to make sure that they show up there, and this could be a sign that your battery is going bad - or just a loose cable. No, it should not happen, but it could. Hope all goes well.

Glenn

 

[John_Berger]

If both of the drives are on the same IDE controller and the BIOS does not detect them, it is possible that the controller has partilly died. If the drives are not there, Windows should not show them at all in either Control Panel or Windows Explorer. So, the fact that Windows is detecting the drives but can't access them, particularly since they're nothing more than standard, ATAPI drives, makes me concered about the controller.

Could it be Windows? Of course. I've never seen this happen before, but this is Windows. I've learned not to underestimate Windows' instability.

 

[dave_brogli]

I had this same problem upon installing a new dvd burner. I had both drive jumpers set to master. It must have messed up the system. Probally not your problem but maybee??

 

[Michael D. Bunting]

Thanks for your knowledge and your suggestions everyone.

I tried a spare CD-ROM and it did the exact same thing (showed up in the BIOS or BOOT sequence) but not in Windows under "My Computer". It was still displaying that it was a Registry problem when you looked at the device stettings tab in "Hardware Manager".

I decided to re-format and then re-installed Windows XP. This did the trick, and both of my drives show up now and I don't have any conflicts or "exclamation points" in the Device Manager.

I had all my Media (Movies/MP3's/etc.) on a different partition/drive, so re-installing Windows didn't really ruin my day...just took up some of it. At least the problem is fixed. I live about 45 minutes from Bill Gates' house...maybe I should stop by and say Hi

Thanks again all!