CDR Problems

[Bu]

CDR problems
While I continue searching for an answer, I may as well ask the question here.
My writer suddenly does not show up in Device Manager. Oh I have disk drives showing but not a mention of CDR. I removed the 3(!!) drives listed and rebooted but my CDR was not recognized. There are no splats--no nothing indicating something is wrong or missing. I notice the drawer keeps opening and closing automatically and quits eventually(guess it gets tired!). Right now it is open and the green light is off. Earlier, it would not release a CD I was attempting to burn. Had to manually power down and then got the CD out during or just after rebooting was complete. First time I have encountered this. Any help out there? TIA.

 

[Boonesmi]

make sure the powerconnector is in all the way (or try a different one)
and maybe try moving it to a different ide controller

most likely either the ide controller is dying or the cdrw drive is dying

 

[Bu]

Strange but the CDRom is back in Device Manager this morning!! AdAware, Spybot and Blaster were run last night and all that was found was a tracking cookie. Also ran NAV full disk scan---nothing. All I did was, when shutting down for the night, I pushed the CD tray in and held it there while PC shut down. Was that the answer, I don't know. I only know it is back and seems to be working properly. Strange creatures these PCs are!! But I love 'em.
Maybe I "helped" the burner complete it's cycle since it kept opening/closing & not working!!

Many thanks for your reply boonesmi.

 

[Bu]

The problem returned but only when I put the same CD in the rom tray--it locked up and the green light never went off. I had to power down to get the CD out of the rom. Never had anything like this before and don't quiet know how to cope with/repair it.
I ran the Trend home virus scan. Nothing there!
The blank CDs that I am using were just bought from Staples 3 days ago and they are Sony 700MB. I really think I have bad CDs.
I tested the same CD in wife's PC and it shows the CD has not been used. I first tried, I thought, to use the same CD to burn my C drive with Ghost 2003. Think I will try Ghost again with a different blank CD and will report back what happens.
BTW, the case has not been moved or opened in months!! And wife's PC spit out the CD immediately when I hit the eject button. (This makes me think it is hardware related on my PC.)

SOMETHING ELSE IS GOING ON HERE!!! Hate to use caps but I want to be sure you see this. I have just noticed that my second hard drive and also drives F and G are missing. F is now my CDROM and it was H when F and G were reported as drives. I THINK drives D and G were on the second hard drive and C, E and F were on the first hard drive before all this started. What a mess!! How can I correct this--easily, I hope.

 

[Boonesmi]

if your cdrw is locking up with those certain cd's then you may just need to to a firmware update to and it could totally fix the problem

as for the second part about other drives disapearing im not sure whats going on

 

[Boonesmi]

what is the make/model of your cdrw?
you can find firmware updates here here

 

[Bu]

Boonesmi, thanks so much for your time in helping me. Thought you might be interested in this c/p I have made:

On another board, I was asked to completely turn off computer for a couple of minutes and my missing disk drives/partitions may return. Well they did and were showing as soon as boot up was complete.
Prior to "re-locating" the above partitions, I backed up my C drive using Ghost 2003 and didn't have a problem with the burner!!

Boonesmi, my burner is an IOMagic IDE 2410 and I will check for an update; thanks to your link

 

[lucky9]

I had some probs with things not showing up and after a long search found a support doc that said to (in device manager) delete the IDE bus....takes something to do it but Windows will find it again and reinstall it

Only time I ever had the problem of the disk locking was with a bad batch of disks or a bad disk. Hope it's not a hardware problem for you.