cd drives disabled

[woodie]

I have a technical problem. For no apparent reason both of my CD drives, a regular cd rom and a cd writer have disappeared from Windows Explorer and Nero cannot see the writer. In Device Manager in My Computer they both have a little yellow circled !'s . When I uninstall them and let Windows XP Pro plug and play them it says the drivers are corrupt. I found which files in Windows/System32/drivers they were using for drivers and replaced them from other working computers it now tells me that a driver (does not say which one) would make Windows unstable and it has disabled it. I'm at my wits end. Do I need to reload the system?? Any one have any ideas.

[Vejita-sama]

WinXP huh? I would suggest:

1) Turn off PC, disconnet both drives from the IDE chain, then reboot PC.
2) Go to Device manger and remove/delete your IDE controller/s, reboot
3) Once the IDE controllers have been reinstalled, turn of PC
4) Re-connect CD drives to IDE chain, power on PC
5) Allow winXP to find drives

The key is removing the IDE controller from device manger then rebooting with nothing attached to the IDE chain. This seems to work when winXP forces drives to be in PIO instead of DMA mode.

[woodie]

Thanks V-s,

I appreciate the help, although a little drastic perhaps. Have you any idea why it happened?? Wndows XP hmph.

Woodie

[gll99]

woodie

Have you any idea why it happened?? Wndows XP hmph.

Loose power or ide connector could cause this. Not likely an XP issue.

You needed to remove them from the device list so that XP would reinstall them for you after the physical reinstall.

If the system is a bit older and this happens again or you get other weird symptoms with other devices, change the ide ribbon and also check your MB battery.