CD & backup drive gone from my computer

blingonmywrist

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2007
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I don't know what i did or when exactly it happened but i turned on my laptop and for some reason my cd drive and computer backup drive are not in my computer. I was trying to format my computer, i put the cd in and it ran and then stopped, i checked my computer and noticed that there was no cd drive or backup drive, just my main C:\ drive. I went to computer management and selected disk management, and it shows all 3 devices my cd drive, my backup drive, and my main drive. My main drive has a C: before it but the other 2 do not have a letter, i right clicked to try to assign a letter to them but the only thing i could do for the cd drive was click help, and for my backup drive i could only click delete partition or help. Here are links of two screen shots if they are of any help.

My Computer: http://blingonmywrist.googlepages.com/mycomputer.jpg

Computer Management: http://blingonmywrist.googlepa...computermanagement.jpg


Thanks
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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If this is a laptop, then more than likely it has one drive in it.
It also looks as if someone has been playing around unsuccessfully with partition magic or disk director.

It is possible that the partition tables got mixed up, or that it is a hardware problem.
If you were going to format anyway, dl a copy of this:
http://www.freedownloadscenter...Partition_Manager.html

Just use one partition - delete all partitions on your hard drive,
Create one partition, allocate all the space.
format as NTFS

Boot off your cd into xp (check you can do that before you go ahead with the format etc)
 

blingonmywrist

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2007
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I dont really under stand what i do with the cute partition manager. I do just want to format my computer but how can i do it without my cd drive. i dont know anything really about partitions. The backup drive was already on my laptop when i got it, I didnt put it there. is there just a simple way to make the cd drive reappear in my computer or to assign a letter to it? I dont have either partition magic or disk director, so its not those. the latest thing that i know i was doing was changing my visual style on my computer and trying to personalize it. I dont think that that would have made them dissapear though.
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
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Can you set us straight on a couple of things.

Was your lappy brand new from a shop, or secondhand?
Did you get any recovery cd with it?


with the partition manager, delete all partitions, then create one partition, format in NTFS
 

blingonmywrist

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2007
9
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I bought my laptop offline from dell and it was brand new in august of '06. I got a dell xp operating system cd, not a recovery cd and it never asked me to make one either. I tried to do a system recovery and tried to change it back to a week ago and it restarted after it finished and it would boot up but after the windows xp bootscreen it would flash a blue screen with white text that said "STOP: c0000135 {Unable To Locate Component} This application has failed to start because winsrv was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." for about a second and reboot.

So i put in my dell xp os cd and while it rebooted it pressed F12 and i selected the option to format my computer and it formatted my computer. But whemn my computer started i had nothing on my desktop which is unusual because i believe last time i formatted my computer, i had some dell stuff on it. Also my computer has no volume on it, no graphics card i believe and no wireless internet because it cannot detect those devices. I think that the software for those devices would be on the dell backup drive and i dont know why that isnt working.

Also, right now i am on my desktop computer because i dont have internet on my laptop anymore.
With the partition manager i created a bootable cd. and booted with it and this is what i get http://i11.tinypic.com/66ys274.jpg what do i do from there?
and if i delete the partitions, am i deleting the 3GB backup on there and losing the information on that
 

simondedalus

Member
Jul 13, 2007
154
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you can use it as a solution:

As for the ATAPI error:
1. check the leads are fitted correctly
2. check your BIOS settings (report back here if doubtfull)
3. lengthy:
Restart in Safe Mode.
Goto Device manager.
Delete ALL cd drives you can see.
shut down the system,
Unplug it from power - open case.
Check jumpers:
Hard drive should be Master.
CD should be Slave.
DO NOT USE CABLE SELECT!

restart- is it there?

NO?... Continue:
Shut down again and unplug power.
Take the IDE cable out of the CD drive.
If extra IDE cable around, connect it to Secondary IDE on Mobo,
Jumper your CD as Master (If Master position is free) and conect it to the Secondary IDE cable.
Restart your system and pray.

ALSO: Modern 80pin cables can upset older systems
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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Hey simon, tis a lappy :p .

F8 all the partitions.
F7 the hard drive.
and go from there.


Look on the Dell site for the drivers - they should be able to be downloaded without too much looking around.

Don't worry for now about how things look, just see if the drivers work and then we can go from there.
If it all works ok from here, nothing to worry about.

If not, then we can explore further.

Wouldn't hurt running a memtest overnite though.
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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Your deh partition seems to be a sort of hidden utility partition.

There is more than likely to be data on there that may be handy to the system for resetting itself if you had the correct cd's.
It is possible that they are bulk cloned at the factory, and that these are useless for you anyway.

 

Old Hippie

Diamond Member
Oct 8, 2005
6,361
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It is possible that they are bulk cloned at the factory, and that these are useless for you anyway.

I was just curious. If the "deh" partition is the Dell restore, I think it's pretty crappy they allocated of 1/2 the HDD for it. My Toshiba restore discs were only good for one thing....resale value. A retail version of XP causes a lot less headaches.
I'm still curious about those 7.84 gb, empty partitions. Another Dell deal?
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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Not empty - full of AOL trials/photoshop trials/Symantec trials/ etc etc -
+ all the other stuff which is crap, and a little of what you might like but can get elsewhere with less hassle
 

montag451

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,587
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Its upto you - without the restore CD that partition is pretty useless to you, and in the best of times the only thing that the partition has on it of use is the drivers.

It is sometimes possible to extract some files from the hidden partitions but tbh it would be quicker and a helluve lot less hassle to dl the drivers from the internet and go from there.
By the time you dl the tools, try them out, figure out the trial periods, find that one tool can do one thing, etc, etc, just start from scratch as if it is a new build -

 

blingonmywrist

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2007
9
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Thank you so much for all of your help! My computer works perfect now im just getting all of the drivers from dell. i even installed vista on a second partition. My cds work now. Thank you so much.