Where did it go?

[vicki lynne]

This is kinda strange and I'm not exactly sure where it goes so I'm trying here. I have a fairly generic pc here with a pentII at 300 mhz, 512 mb ram, and win xp. I put a cd in the drive and opened my computer, then e drive and was copying a file from the cd when it locked up. Meaning the whole thing froze up. Anyway, I ejected the cd and everything started working again. I closed out all the pages I had opened, put another cd in the drive, opened my computer again, and my cd drive was completely gone!!!!!!! I checked device manager and it still shows it being there and working properly but I just can't access it. Where did it go and can I get it back?

[mjc]

Go into Device Manager, find the CD and remove it...reboot and it should be back...if not, you'll probably need to do a little registry editing. This is a common problem with XP, but it really isn't a problem...it is a 'feature'...it is a way the oS has of protecting itself from a bad or incompatible drive.

[Paul Komski]

Read THIS (http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-04-06.htm#4) and consider running the dougknox script to remove the upperfilters and lowerfilters values from the registry.

[vicki lynne]

O.k. I tried uninstalling the drive and rebooting. Windows recognized and said it was installed and ready to use. Still when I opened my computer there was no cd-rom drive. Just a big gap where it used to be. Then I downloaded the dougknox fix and ran it. It said finished, your drive should now appear in explorer. Again, just a big blank spot where it used to be. What should I do now?

[Paul Komski]

Does it appear in Disk Management (run diskmgmt.msc) and if so does it have a drive letter. If it is there but with no drive letter then try assigning it one. You could also try TweakUI for XP (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) and check as to whether it needs to have its drive enabled there.

If still no go try booting to a boot floppy diskette (one with CD rom support) and see if the floppy can visualise the CD Drive. Indeed you could also check to see whether you can boot to a CD. Both of these are to test the functionality of the drive and discriminate if this is a hardware or windows problem.

[vicki lynne]

Yes, it does appear in disk management and does have a drive letter assigned to it. I'm working on the other things now. Back in a bit.

[Paul Komski]

If you type the drive letter and a colon eg D: into the address bar of explorer - what happens?

[vicki lynne]

If I do that the little message box pops up that says "Please insert a disk into drive D:\

[Paul Komski]

Best guess now is a bad CD disk or a bad CD drive. So try a known good CD disk in the drive.

Booting to a boot floppy is still a good idea to see if the drive can be accessed from DOS.

[vicki lynne]

O.k. I haven't tried booting to a floppy yet but trying to boot to a cd was an adventure in itself. Sometimes depending on the condition of the cd, and how clean it is, you could hear the drive spin up nice and strong and it would boot with no problem, but, if it were an older cd, or a burnt cd, or even just a little dirty it will only spin up intermittently if at all. And even if you hear it spin up nice and strong that's no guarentee that it's seeing the cd. Even with some brand new ones, it would keep asking me to put a cd in the drive.

SO, I've more than likely got a bad cd rom drive, huh?

[Paul Komski]

SO, I've more than likely got a bad cd rom drive, huh?
Faulty or dirty are certainly possibilities - particularly if that's the case with new pressed CDROM as opposed to CDR/RW disks. The intermittent spin-up sounds like either the drive or the disk is bad (or inappropriate for the drive). Swapping disks and drives is about the only useful troubleshooting method but if it failed suddenly, as you described, and more than one disk is unreadable it points, obviously, towards the drive being the culprit. Luckily they are now very cheap to replace.

[Sylvander]

I normally use a [FREE] "Smart Boot Manager" bootable floppy (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498) [FDD 1st to boot] to display a list of drives detected as connected and bootable.

1. That shows that the optical drive [or whatever] is seen as present.
CD0 is my "Primary Master" CD-RW, CD1 is the "Secondary Master" CD-ROM, [my HDD is on a controller card].
I use the keyboard down/up keys to navigate to [highlight] CD0.

2. I must carefully watch the LED on the optical drive after closing the drawer [with the bootable CD in it] to wait until the blinking ceases and only then hit "Enter".

3. If there's a problem booting the CD a big RED warning window is displayed.
Its possible to then hit "Esc" and [open and close the drawer, waiting for the blinking to cease before hitting] "Enter" to try again.
This business gives a clear indication of anything amiss.
Sometimes it can take a while for the CD to register [be detected and be ready].
The timing must be just right.

[vicki lynne]

Thanks guys, I'll try the Smart Boot Manager Floppy and probably follow that with a new cd rom. Thanks again.