Hi..HELP REAL DUMB MOVE

[kickingbird]

Well to make a long story short here goes.I was fooling around with my floppy drive on my Xp Home Edition,apparently they are notorious for failing.Was trying out another driver that was recomended,installed it no go.At this point was very tired.My dvd/cd rom devices are right above the floppy disk controllers in device manager at some point believe it or not i uninstalled them[dumb move] i can no longer see my [E drive] OR [F drive].They are still there in device manager with exclamations in front of them i also had a virtual drive so there is three in total.I have googled myself to death on this.I was told by a guy at a puter shop it is a registry problem,sure enough i found something in the registry at hkey_current_user\software\microsoft\currentversio n\policies\explorer there are four entries three all have values beside them.The one i think may be the culprit says[no drives reg_binary 00 00 0000].The others have reg_dword.Am i on the right track here can anyone help me out.Is there a reg patch somebody can send me straighten this out.I was thinking if any one can help me out here it would be you guys.Hope this post wasn't to long tried to be as brief as i could.I'm in a real dillema promised my brother his movie...haha

[Noahtuck]

Just spitballing here but,
Have you tried just rebooting ??

I have done this on purpose with my HDD's and you just have to reboot & windows should reinstal them, i would assume seeing as it does this for the HDD's although i have never needed to do it for my optical drives 8)

I see you say a PC shop guy told you something and you never said if you have rebooted but i'm guessing maybe you have and still have this problem ?

[kickingbird]

Yup noahtuck have rebooted many times was hoping that might solve the problem.I am fairly new to puters like four years.I went into the bios and it says they are there the optical drives.My cd/dvd rom and my cd/dvd burner,i did what i thought was reset them to defaults,not absoulutely sure here.Nothing changed,i have tried doing a recovery but when i get to that point it says restore.log is missing,i click ok and it says something about minint missing click ok than it just reboots.This puter came preloaded with os on a seperate d drive.I have tried uninstalling the drives and they dissapear from the device manager with warnings.Reboot and found new hardware icon appears in taskbar,check device manager again and the dreaded exclamation point is back.My burning programs that worked great say there is no drive.I am able to encode a movie but that is all no burn.I have tried to roll back drivers nothing.It says a driver[service] for this device has been disabled,an alternate driver may be providing this functionality [code32] troubleshooting is of no use at all.That registry entry troubles me in my previous post.Once again sorry about such a long post just trying to lay everything out as clearly as possible.Anybody any ideas at all??

[thevoelk]

Have you tried rolling back the driver to a previous state?

[waheed]

Try this. Disconnect the drives physically be removing the IDE cable, switch on PC and shut down again, then connect the drives back gain. Switch PC on again. Worth a shot.

[aedipuss]

sounds more like an aspi problem. try this -

Remove the Upperfilters and Lowerfilters values completely from the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

if they still don't come back try re-installing an aspi layer. for xp -

http://www.dvd2svcd.org/xp-aspi.zip

then re-install any burning software that doesn't work.

[handyguy]

XP comes with Restore, useful to restore your computer to a time it worked.

[ozymango]

So were you able to fix this yet? If not, I'd try just uninstalling the IDE controller, not just the drives, reboot, and let the system put everything back in place.

To do that, open Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager and then look down the list for "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" (or something like that, might be different from Home vs. Pro).

Then expand that icon and you should have three items listed: Some kind of controller, a Primary IDE Channel, and a Secondary IDE Channel. Right-click on each of these (start from the bottom, the Secondary IDE Channel) and then select "Uninstall" from the menu). If I read you right you uninstalled the drives once, but not the controller? You need to remove everything. It'll probably give you all sorts of warnings and then run and want to restart, but don't restart, just do this for the Primary channel and then the controller itself. Then reboot.

This should prompt Windows to put everything back in place. I had a really cheap and finicky motherboard once and every few months the IDE controller would flake-out and drop the secondary IDE bus. I'd have to go through this process to get it working again, and it always worked for me. Hope it works for you if you haven't fixed it already!

[Nelson37]

Who told you floppy drives are notorious for failing? They are not.

What "new driver for floppy drives" did you try? Precise information needed. Write this down - Whoever told you that you needed a new device driver for the Floppy Drive is someone you should NEVER, repeat NEVER, listen to again. That is one of the dumbest things I have heard in 15 years in the PC repair business. Right next to "what did you do after you watched the water run into the monitor? 'I turned it on'".

Is the device DISABLED? Sounds like the service is, you can check control panel, administrative tools, services. But first check the device itself, sounds like it is disabled.

Do not mess with the Registry unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN what you are doing. In other words, don't mess with it.

[kickingbird]

Thanks guys for all the input.To nelson 37 if you google[no id address mark was found on floppy disk] you will see what i was talking about apparently is a fairly common problem. This is the url where i got the driver http://www.eio.com/public/floppdrv/0546.html the floppy did work when i first got it the puter,maybe not sure,may have been corrupted when i got a windows update possibly.Was a bad move only wanted to take a small program to my bro and got caught up in the moment trying to get it to work.

Have been away for a couple of days and before i got back to this forum tried physically unplugging the ide controllers and electrical connectors in the back.I had also removed them in device manager and rebooted a couple of times unplugged and uninstalled.Hoping it may be recognized.Nadda!! Plugged them back in and booted up same thing the yellow sign of death.


I am going to try both ozymangoes suggestion and aedipuss ideas.Yup i tried rolling the drivers back nothing to roll back to.Sheet handyguy i wish it was that simple to do a restore have nothing to restore to,not sure but when i tried to do a restore it had either been disabled during the fiasco or i had turned it off,i do that sometimes to get a fresh restore point when everything is okay and maybe forgot to turn on again.

I usually make a restore point before i install anything i was fatigued did not do. Aedipuss not sure about upper and lower filters and things but i am going to take a look as you say there.Ozymangoes will give that a shot,do yah think i should unplug thr ide controllers also when i do that??


Thanks hope you guys hang in here with me

[Nelson37]

That error results from performing a quick format on a disk that has never been formatted. It is not what I would call common, though floppy disk usage has gone way down while XP has come on the scene. Absolutely no need to replace floppy drivers, those have been bone standard for many years, using some other idiots floppy drivers is just simply a bad idea.

Used to get a similar error years back using 720 k disks without using the right switches, F:9 T:80. Anyway, there have been no significant changes or issues with floppy disks for many years, support in windows is completely standard, changing drivers was your first mistake.

So replacing the driver was your idea? OK, this is a train wreck waiting to happen. Strongly advise you get a professional to look at the box, there is most likely something simple you are leaving out. Like the error message that started this whole problem. Also you are not equipped to go much farther, you are likely going to create more serious problems.

Since you probably don't know this, I fix PC's for a living, for over 15 years. Nothing personal, you may get lucky, but I have seen similar situations many times in the past, it is very likely you are going to dig yourself a bigger hole. Stop the pain and call a pro, you don't know what you are doing.

[InXess]

Set BIOS to Fail Safe. Either remove ALL devices from Dev.Manager to be reenumerated again (reboot) or rerun XP setup with repair option. Backup all stuff before. Setup is the most powerful device enumerator. If devices are not physically damaged they will be fixed.

[kickingbird]

Well thanks everybody for the input.I can now say problem solved,was quite painless really.Thanks very much aedipuss for your advice,followed it to a tee,rebooted and magically reappeared.I think the only thing not working is anydvd,not a problem will do a reinstall.

I had seen that advice somewhere in my searches but diddn't try because there was so much information out there.Till it was directed right at me.

Nelson just a short comment i respect that you have been in the puter business for 15 yrs.But some people can't just take it to a shop and plop down their box and say here fix it,couldn't afford it right now even if i wanted too.I did ask about it was quoted 50 bucks for a diagnosis and what ever amount of time it would take to fix,so i would be probably be looking at a hundred and a half,machine laid up for a week or two.

It reminds me of a time when i was drilling the dash on an older car i had, to put in a manual choke.I know your not supposed to drill any wires under there but i did hit some.Taped them back up where each wire had to go.This was right under the ignition wires and had hit a few.Got the choke all hooked up and the car wouldn't start.I stood there at the front of the car for a couple of hours trying to figure out what had went wrong.

I broke down and took it to a shop diddn't want to but i did,was trying to save some dough by doing it myself.Anyways it was 40 or 50 for a diagnosis had to be done plus however much per hour,minuimum one hour at shop rates.Picked it up slapped down my 130 or 140 bucks asked what was wrong.Was a fusible link right at the battery had went when i hit the wires.I was staring at it handling it for a couple of hours it was right in front of my eyes

Had i spoke to someone who had some knowledge to what might have went wrong i could of saved that 140 bucks,remember i was staring right at it.And thats the great thing about this puter age.I dragged myself out of the stone age where people share their information freely with no strings attached and for that i am gratefull.

If you can be fearless and step up to the plate there are a lot of things you can do yourself.Yes the registry is foreboding but when you get specific instructions I WILL NOT FEAR Sorry that may not have been a short comment my appologies.

Oh aedipuss there was no need to install that aspi layer again.