Disc drives disappeared?

The Song Thrush

Hello...

OK I'm running XP Pro, a Pentium 2 processor. Well, both my DVD drive and CD-RW drives have disappeared. All the other drives are there and working properly; floppy, both hard drives, zip drive, and an external harddrive. It's only the disc drives that have vanished.

I only noticed this today, and the last time I used them was about 2 days ago when I burned a CD. I haven't made any changes or installions, etc. that could have caused this, so I've no idea what it could be.

Any ideas? Bear in mind, I'm not very computer literate. I'm about the average comp user. Cheers.

The Song Thrush

I should also mention that the drives still work physically, i.e. they eject like normal. So it's not a power problem.

pred racer

Presuming both of your cd-roms are on your secondary IDE port, I would think that you have an ide controller problem (drivers/bios etc)or your secondary ide controller could be borked completely (has happened to me twice) or hopefully your ide cable has been removed from the board somehow.

Any recent hardware installs?

check control panel -> system -> hardware ->device manager ->IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and see if there is an error beside your secondary controller.

can you check if both your cd-roms are on the same cable (cos if they're on different ones I havent a clue) and that it is plugged in securely

roamer

If you go into your BIOS you should be able to verify that the BIOS has detected the drives. If not, try reseating the cables.

If BIOS is detecting ok, try reinstalling the drivers.

steveland?

Installed any new hardware recently?

I installed a new PSU a while ago and knocked an IDE cable out a tiny bit... took me ages to figure out before I remembered putting in the PSU

Mutant_Fruit

Have you played any copy protected CD's released by Sony in your computer recently? That could be it.

steveland?

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Have you played any copy protected CD's released by Sony in your computer recently? That could be it.

Can that rootkit thingy damage your PC?

MrSinn

A quick and easy way to fix it would be to go to control panel and add hardware,it should pick it up in there,you wont need software as the drivers are in windows,follow the instructions on screen

Mutant_Fruit

steveland? wrote:

Can that rootkit thingy damage your PC?

Yes, yes it can. If any of those CD's are inserted into a PC running 64bit winxp, the next time you reboot, your cd drives will be gone. Thats apart from the fact any virus writers can (and have) hide any process by prepending the name with $sys$. Thus making virus'/spyware invisible aswell.

A quick and easy way to fix it would be to go to control panel and add hardware,it should pick it up in there,you wont need software as the drivers are in windows,follow the instructions on screen

Unfortunately i don't think that works for sony's rootkit. Its hidden and deeply embedded in the OS. You'll have to check up a few old threads for the means to uninstall it. I wouldn't advise going to the Sony site and getting their uninstaller, as in order to retrieve the rootkit uninstaller, you have to install an ActiveX control which is itself a huge security risk.

CyberGhost

Download/run the fix

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/xp_cd_dvd_fix.vbs

The Song Thrush

pred racer wrote:

check control panel -> system -> hardware ->device manager ->IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and see if there is an error beside your secondary controller.

can you check if both your cd-roms are on the same cable (cos if they're on different ones I havent a clue) and that it is plugged in securely

There's no error beside the secondary controller. And the cables are connected fine.

roamer wrote:

If you go into your BIOS you should be able to verify that the BIOS has detected the drives. If not, try reseating the cables.

If BIOS is detecting ok, try reinstalling the drivers.

How do I go into the BIOS?

steveland? wrote:

Installed any new hardware recently?

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Have you played any copy protected CD's released by Sony in your computer recently? That could be it.

Nope, haven't done that.

MrSinn wrote:

A quick and easy way to fix it would be to go to control panel and add hardware,it should pick it up in there,you wont need software as the drivers are in windows,follow the instructions on screen

CyberGhost wrote:

Download/run the fix

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/xp_cd_dvd_fix.vbs

Tried that, without success.

Any more ideas?

CyberGhost

replace a cdrom? cables, see if it works.

_CreeD_

So only one person on this thread actually suggested trying to find the root cause of the problem before suggesting solutions. Fellas it's great offering someone help so I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it seems to be the norm these days for everyone to rush in with possible cures without having a clue why it's happening in the first place, that's a pretty bad way to troubleshoot.
Roamer had it right to a T. Start with verification in the BIOS and then the cabling. Hardware throubleshooting mantra. Then move onto the other (Good - Im not disputing that) suggestions. Just work from the ground up.

Thrush when your system is first booting (before it gets to the Windows menu or loading screen) you should see a message at the bottom saying something like "Press X to enter Setup", wheere "X" is usually F1 or DEL. Press the appropriate key and you shold end up in a very simple little menu screen. Look for something like Standard CMOS options and press enter to go in there, it should show you four slots for your IDE Devices and codes indication what is on each slot (They should be obvious, as the device type and the manufacturer is usually in the code). What you're looking for is to see if the missing drives are mentioned here. If they are then your physical connections should be fine so move on to the various suggestions above. If you can't see them here then have a look in the BIOS for another section that's uaualy marked Advanced, and there'll be a subsection for IDE device. Make sure both controllers are Enabled. This will all be more obvious when you see it for yourself.
If you still can't see the drives in the BIOS then open the PC and check your cabling, jumpers etc. I won't go into that as to be honest this isn't likely unless you were fooling around inside, and I don't have time, you can google or do a search here on the the procedures to follow (its pretty easy).

Wolverine_1999

Interesting problem. I have a similar problem with my dvd-rw drive. It suddenly dissapears from "My Computer" whenever the computer was on for a while... This seems to be a different problem though. Any word on the Sony somftware? If not, have you checked in device manager if the drives are actually there? The IDE controller may be ok, but this doesn't mean the drives are there too.

This would be the same as checking the startup if the drives are detected or not. Similar situation in detecting the drives in the bios.

ifah

Is it possible that some other device has taken the drive letter that you previously had your cd/dvd drives mapped to ?

Go into Control Manager/Admin Tools/Compuet Management - Select Disk Management and check what devices are listed - You should be able to Right Click on the drive and change drive letter to something else unused.

Stephen

I seriously doubt its the sony rootkit, considering it was only on certain CD's released to the US market, not internationally.

Wolverine_1999

Wolverine_1999 wrote:

Interesting problem. I have a similar problem with my dvd-rw drive. It suddenly dissapears from "My Computer" whenever the computer was on for a while... This seems to be a different problem though. Any word on the Sony somftware? If not, have you checked in device manager if the drives are actually there? The IDE controller may be ok, but this doesn't mean the drives are there too.

This would be the same as checking the startup if the drives are detected or not. Similar situation in detecting the drives in the bios.

any update on this song thrush?

The Troll

I had this same problem and fixed it as follows.

Note do this at your own risk, but i've fixed this same problem on three separate machines with these steps.

{Extra note: This problem usually occurs when installing/uninstalling Roxio and Sonic software)

Steps:

1. Go to run - type regedit. Press enter.
2. Now click on the + sign beside "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
3. Click on the + sign beside "SYSTEM"
4. Click on the + sign beside "CurrentControlSet"
5. Click on the + sign beside "Control"
6. Click on the + sign beside Class
7. Now click on {4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In the right hand side window you should see 2 values called "Upperfilters" and "lowerfilters". Select upperfilters, then do -> edit - delete.

Do the same thing for lowerfilters.

Reboot your pc and you should be back in business.

The Troll

Did this work for you?