posted
My parents' computer is having a pretty weird problem. At some point in the recent past, windows XP Pro stopped recognizing their optical drives.
Actually, that's not entirely accurate. It still sees them in Device Manager (albiet with the nice yellow "This isn't going to work" icon) and identifies them correctly, but you can't use them.
They are detected fine in the BIOS and you can boot from the drives and/or use them in a DOS session. It is just for some reason, Windows isn't able to access them correctly.
I did all the basic stuff: checked the cables, took on drive off, unistalled them and detected, tried to update the drivers (no dice, says the one it is using is the most current), and tried to reload the manufacturers' firmware for the one drive (wouldn't because it didn't find any appropriate drives). It keeps coming back to the same situation.
My tentative thinking is that, since they were working with no problem up until recently and I don't think that my parents have installed anything on their computer themselves in this time, that maybe it was a windows update that screwed it up. One possible possibility for a screw up is the hard drive is on a serial ATA cable and the opticals are on an IDE. Altought they've got a floppy on an IDE and that works fine.
Does anyone have any advice? I've reached the limits of what I can do that doesn't involve drastic measures. Thanks.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Have you tried plugging them into a different computer? That will help you determine whether it is a problem with the drive or a problem with the computer/operating system (though my guess leans strongly towards the latter).
Posts: 1466 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Another thing you could try - if you have your Windows XP disc - is to do a repair install. Maybe some system file is corrupt.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
If you can boot from the drives, the problem is in the OS. I've looked around a little for the problem, but can't see much beyond this utility which may or may not work. It is worth giving it a try. (You may want to simply download the CDGone registry files that page links to. Unpack the file and double click the registry entries, then reboot)
If this doesn't work, I need a little more information. Are these drives both Burners? Have you tried using a new IDE Cable (Might be a problem...though the ability to boot from CD makes this less likely)? Do you know the exact date the drives stopped working? It may be possible to do a system restore to fix the problem. Then if it fixes the problem, keep an eye on the computer to see if any changes cause the problem to return.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I had this problem a few weeks ago on my thinkpad. Turned out something had been corrupted on my hard drive. I had to go in and delete two registry entries, restart and that made it recreate/reinitialize whatever it needed to. I stupidly didn't bookmark the instructions (eg which entries to delete), but I'll look around for them and post again if I find them.
EDIT: LINK Well while these aren't the instructions I used, it look like it's telling you to do the same thing. I of course can't guarantee that this will fix your problem, and you should always be very careful when messing with your registry! Hope it helps.
Posts: 187 | Registered: Jan 2005
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