Yikes! Both by cd-rom drives disappeared!

[Ferocious]

WTH?

I haven't used either my regular cd-rom drive or cdRW drive for a couple weeks....and have not opened the case at all for any reason.

Today I went to put a cd in and hit the little button to open the one drive....nothing. Then I tried the other drive.....again nothing.

Device manager shows no cd-rom drives installed.

Under My Computer.....they don't show up anymore.

Add new hardware wizard found no new hardware to install.

Help.

I'm using XP.

 

[Lonyo]

Power cables still plugged in correctly?
IDE cables snug?
Do they show up in the BIOS screen?

 

[Ferocious]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Power cables still plugged in correctly?
IDE cables snug?
Do they show up in the BIOS screen?

Yes, yes, and no.

 

[Lonyo]

Have you tried another IDE cable with the drives? Or maybe a different 4 pin molex from the PSU.
Double check jumper settings on the drives (I doubt they would cause the issue though).
Have you got any spare drives you could swap in? Or a spare computer to test the drives in?

 

[Ferocious]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Have you tried another IDE cable with the drives? Or maybe a different 4 pin molex from the PSU.
Double check jumper settings on the drives (I doubt they would cause the issue though).
Have you got any spare drives you could swap in? Or a spare computer to test the drives in?

No I haven't tried another cable yet. Don't have one handy. Not sure what molex is.

I want to try and solve this without getting dirty first. I doubt both drives went bad at the same time.

I wonder if I have some kind of tricky boot sector virus or something.

 

[Ferocious]

umm, quick question.

I guess since the drives don't show up in the BIOS.....I should not waste time finding a software solution.

It must be a hardware/cable problem...correct?

 

[NathanBWF]

Originally posted by: Ferocious
umm, quick question.

I guess since the drives don't show up in the BIOS.....I should not waste time finding a software solution.

It must be a hardware/cable problem...correct?

That's what I'm guessing. The only time I've seen this happen in the past is when their has been a hardware problem either with the drives themselves, incorrect jumper settings (which shouldn't be your problem being as how you hadn't made any changes), a bad IDE cable, and once when I forgot to plug them into the power supply

 

[Lonyo]

Yup, I would assume it's a cable problem.
Molex is just the 4 pin power connector that's plugged into the back of the drive.
I doubt the power cable would have gone bad, but it was a thought.
Most likely thing is either than the IDE cable died, there was some kind of power surge that managed to kill both drives, or the IDE channel is dead (if both are on the same IDE channel).

 

[renierh]

well, i had the exact same thing happen to me a few days ago!.

everything worked well, then i installed a driver (i think it was for my webcam but i,m not shure) and all of a sudden, my dvd-rom and dvd-rw are gone!

i hardly think it's a hardware problem(as in: dead hardware), since all i had to to to get them back was go to a restore point from before i installed the cam software. i think it 's probably a conflict between USB drivers and the second IDE connector on the mainboard or something like that, but that's just a guess.

this is my rig:
ASUS P4C800 (non deluxe)
P4 3.0C
ASUS 9600XT
1024 MB TwinMos PC3200
160GB Maxtor SATA
NEC 2510A
Aopen DVD 16x

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: renierh
well, i had the exact same thing happen to me a few days ago!.

everything worked well, then i installed a driver (i think it was for my webcam but i,m not shure) and all of a sudden, my dvd-rom and dvd-rw are gone!

i hardly think it's a hardware problem(as in: dead hardware), since all i had to to to get them back was go to a restore point from before i installed the cam software. i think it 's probably a conflict between USB drivers and the second IDE connector on the mainboard or something like that, but that's just a guess.

this is my rig:
ASUS P4C800 (non deluxe)
P4 3.0C
ASUS 9600XT
1024 MB TwinMos PC3200
160GB Maxtor SATA
NEC 2510A
Aopen DVD 16x

But did your drives show up in the BIOS?
A Windows driver change shouldn't cause drives not to show up in the BIOS.

 

[Ferocious]

I'm going to do a restore several weeks back just to see if it makes a difference.

It shouldn't imo......but then again....strangers things have happened.

Assuming it doesn't work...I will need to closely examine the connections and go from there.

 

[renierh]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

But did your drives show up in the BIOS?
A Windows driver change shouldn't cause drives not to show up in the BIOS.

i actually didn't bother to check. the only thing that changed btween the drives working and the drives being gone, was 5 minutes of driver installing, so i just undid that.

well, just try, it worked for me.

 

[Ferocious]

I tried restoring to a point one month ago.

Same problem as it should be.

Time for the mask and surgical gloves. :frown: