disc drive

older i get better i was

Hi techies i've a small problem i hope, my computer is not recognoising my main disc drive, when i click on my computer it just shows local disc c, printer, but its not showing the main d one any tips please, it worked earlier today as i loaded on norton tru a disc?

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

Hi techies i've a small problem i hope, my computer is not recognoising my main disc drive, when i click on my computer it just shows local disc c, printer, but its not showing the main d one any tips please, it worked earlier today as i loaded on norton tru a disc?

Go into device manager and see if it appears under CD/DVD rom drives, if it does right click on the drive and uninstall it, the restart the computer and see if it appears again. If it doesn't go into disk management (Right click on computer/my computer link in start menu>Manage>Disk Management) and if the drive appears under there right click it >Change Drive letter and assign it another unused letter e.g G: or something.
If the computer got a knock moved around lately a cable could have also come loose, open up the machine make sure the cables are plugged in to the drive and motherboard, it could be the drive has failed also

Nick

Lundar.

Hi older i get better i was,

do you mean your Dvd drive or a Hard drive as it unclear what your saying .

to chekc if your harddrive or dvd isn't working use device manager

Click Start , then run or search for this code : devmgmt.msc

its should bring up the device manager :



if the drive isn't showing up or isn't working it will show there as ? symbol .

bonzodog2

Right click My Computer and choose Manage from the menu. This should bring up Disk Management in a few seconds.Depending on whether you have 1 hard disk partitioned into 2 logical drives, or 2 real disks, you will see different things. Look on the bottom-right of the window.

older i get better i was

ok guys just to clear up its the disc dvd drive thats not working I tried to uninstall it and restart the computer , it says then its found new hardware but then it still doesnt work, on the device manager i get this HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-448LB preceeded by a yellow exclamation mark, something tells me it mite be a driver issue but if it is how can i reinstall driver from disc if the drive doesn't work, do i make any sense?

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

ok guys just to clear up its the disc dvd drive thats not working I tried to uninstall it and restart the computer , it says then its found new hardware but then it still doesnt work, on the device manager i get this HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-448LB preceeded by a yellow exclamation mark, something tells me it mite be a driver issue but if it is how can i reinstall driver from disc if the drive doesn't work, do i make any sense?

CD/DVD drives don't need a driver, Windows provides default drivers for such devices which should install automatically upon boot, to confirm its the drive is the problem and not the OS, if you have any Windows XP/Vista/7 discs or can borrow them put them in the drive and try boot off the disc at startup, the Norton CD may be bootable, so you could try that, if it boots off ok, theres a problem with Windows, if not replace the drive.
Drives are very cheap, can pick up dvd burners for around €25~ nowadays

Nick

older i get better i was

have tried several discs, norton, etc to no avail, do you reckon it would be cheaper and handier to install an external drive than just getting the tower repaired?

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

have tried several discs, norton, etc to no avail, do you reckon it would be cheaper and handier to install an external drive than just getting the tower repaired?

Just install an internal drive, especially as its a desktop (I believe from googling the drive model it appears), its probably an IDE drive, so replace it with something like this:
http://www.peats.com/cgi-bin/catalog_v2.cgi?type=product&id=24827

Nick

To check if its an IDE drive:
Top with long flat ribbon cable is IDE:

Bottom with short cable SATA

--Pictured is a hard drive, I just found this on Google images, but the connectors remain the same

older i get better i was

by the way when I click on the device manager and then the exclamation marked dvd/cd rom drive it says "windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The hardware maybe corrupted or missing (code 39), what does this mean exactly?

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

by the way when I click on the device manager and then the exclamation marked dvd/cd rom drive it says "windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The hardware maybe corrupted or missing (code 39), what does this mean exactly?

The drive is screwed, if you tried to boot off a bootable disc, Ie a Windows disc, Ubuntu disc etc and even that failed the drive is broken,

Nick

older i get better i was

thanx, will prob drop it into scrd computers, I was a truck mechanic in a previous life i'd be afraid of what i'd do if i tried changing it myself, wil let you know outcome many thanx for help.

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

thanx, will prob drop it into scrd computers, I was a truck mechanic in a previous life i'd be afraid of what i'd do if i tried changing it myself, wil let you know outcome many thanx for help.

It is very very simple to replace a CD drive, look it up on youtube.com for video tutorials, I'd nearly go as far to say if you can use boards you could replace an optical drive :P . You just unplug the old one, there will be two plugs the ribbon cable and the smaller molex power one, these are designed so they can't be inserted the wrong way around! *I am assuming its a desktop machine and not a laptop*

Nick

older i get better i was

yeah dell inspirion 7-8 yrs old i'm guessing, desktop, will look into it.

yoyo

older i get better i was wrote: »

yeah dell inspirion 7-8 yrs old i'm guessing, desktop, will look into it.

You'll be heavily ripped off by most computer shops for this job, it really is a 15minute job max for a novice, would take me no more than 5 mins to swap a drive out, usually 4 screws holding it in place, on the Dells these are sometimes handy pull out rails which you unscrew,

Nick

older i get better i was

Got it replaced by lad in work who dables in puters for 30 blips, tnx all for help