- Apr 24, 2001
- 6,005
- 517
- 126
Hi folks,
A neighbour of mine called me the other day, asking for help with his machine ... He's a pretty cool guy, and has helped me with a home improvement project a while ago. I build computers as a hobby, so I was glad to help.
The guy has a 4 year-old Acer machine (sporting a Celeron D and a "generous" 256 MB RAM!)... I told him he will need at least 1 GB of extra RAM (no big deal, DDR400 is pretty cheap), then proceeded to look at the device manager. The soundcard was not recognized, and there was an exclamation sign next to the CD-ROM drive.
I identified the onboard soundcard chip, installed the proper drivers, then proceeded to look at the optical unit. It turns out the drivers for the device are missing, or have never been installed. I've never encountered this issue in my life before, so I asked him what happened. Turns out that a while ago he gave his machine to a small shop, when he had a virus, and the "repairmen" wiped the HDD and re-installed Windows XP... somehow leaving out the drivers for the CD-ROM...
I'm scratching my head at this point... The BIOS sees the CD-ROM, but that's about it. I tried swapping the LG-branded CD-ROM it with a working DVD-ROM unit, but that wasn't recognized by the system, either. I even tried to hook up an external optical drive via USB, and it still won't get recognized.
Do you have any idea how this can be fixed?
A neighbour of mine called me the other day, asking for help with his machine ... He's a pretty cool guy, and has helped me with a home improvement project a while ago. I build computers as a hobby, so I was glad to help.
The guy has a 4 year-old Acer machine (sporting a Celeron D and a "generous" 256 MB RAM!)... I told him he will need at least 1 GB of extra RAM (no big deal, DDR400 is pretty cheap), then proceeded to look at the device manager. The soundcard was not recognized, and there was an exclamation sign next to the CD-ROM drive.
I identified the onboard soundcard chip, installed the proper drivers, then proceeded to look at the optical unit. It turns out the drivers for the device are missing, or have never been installed. I've never encountered this issue in my life before, so I asked him what happened. Turns out that a while ago he gave his machine to a small shop, when he had a virus, and the "repairmen" wiped the HDD and re-installed Windows XP... somehow leaving out the drivers for the CD-ROM...
I'm scratching my head at this point... The BIOS sees the CD-ROM, but that's about it. I tried swapping the LG-branded CD-ROM it with a working DVD-ROM unit, but that wasn't recognized by the system, either. I even tried to hook up an external optical drive via USB, and it still won't get recognized.
Do you have any idea how this can be fixed?
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