Repairing Registry- Incomplete or damaged info ?? No Optical Drives!!!

[Noahtuck]

Okay,
Neither of my optical drives are showing up in windows explorer or in any burning or ripping programs.

Any idea's on how to fix this without doing a clean install of XP Pro ??

Did not add anything or change anything so i have no clue what happened....
They showed up earlier when i ripped and burned an ISO, then went to burn another one and neither would show up..

Yes i have ran scans of AV/spybot/ect ect ect.

Here is a screen shot of the error message i am getting....



I need to do a reformat and reinstall on my C: drive anyway's as it's been awhile, but i have some stuff going on at the moment that does not allow me the time right now to hassle with it.

Thanks!

Edit:
I also ran CCleaner, uninstalled both drives, the IDE channel, nadda

[Bodyslide]

Found this via Google...Danger if your not sure about editing the Registry manually please don't attempt....Good Luck

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

Step 1: Start Registry Editor
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. Registry Editor starts.
Step 2: Delete the UpperFilters registry entry
1. In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the right pane (topic area), click UpperFilters.

Note An UpperFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the UpperFilters registry entry, you must click UpperFilters and not UpperFilters.bak.
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7. When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the UpperFilters registry entry:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The UpperFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.

Note Do not exit Registry Editor. You must have this program for the next step.
Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry
1. In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the right pane (topic area), click LowerFilters.

Note An LowerFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the LowerFilters registry entry, you must click LowerFilters and not LowerFilters.bak.
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7. When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the LowerFilters registry entry:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The LowerFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.
8. Exit Registry Editor.

Step 4: Restart the computer
If a CD recording program no longer works after you restart the computer, you must reinstall the CD recording program.

[redwudz]

The only other thought I had was, do you have a program like Daemon Tools installed? It may cause strange problems with physical drives some times.

[ks47]

Okay,
Neither of my optical drives are showing up in windows explorer or in any burning or ripping programs.

Any idea's on how to fix this without doing a clean install of XP Pro ??...

Did not add anything or change anything so i have no clue what happened....

Similar thing happened to me recently. I don't know what caused it but the optical drive disappeared from the computer in XP OS. I tried delete and have the device manager findl it, as you did. Next, I tried to reinstall just the opitcal drive via original disk. One method worked me for awhile was I went to an earlier point in my computer configuration, but it did not solve the problem permanently.

I finally ended reformatting the C drive and reinstalling the entire Win XP OS; I haven't had any problem since.

TS

[GKar]

Try unplugging the drives and plugging them back in then going into the BIOS to make sure they show up.

You can try system restore as mentioned above.

[Noahtuck]

In over 10 years this is the first time i ever had something like this happen... and believe me, i've done some doozies in my time

@ Bodyslide

Yeah, i've edited in my registry before but only for specific things that i knew where to find them but i've never had this problem before & thought maybe someone here knew of a way or a program that might just fix it quick without a bunch of monkey #$%^@# around....

I'll run through what ya posted and check it out, thanks.

@ redwudz
Nope, no daemon tools installed... i do use nero image drive once in awhile but i've used that for years and never had a problem so i don't know.
But i disabled it and no change....

@ ks47
Well... i don't use system restore because it wastes space and time and anything that get's messed up that bad usually need's a reformat & reinstall of the OS anyways so

And i usually reformat just my C: drive and do a fresh install at least every 6 months just because it's no big deal and keeps everything clean and moving along but i slacked this summer and never did one.

But i'm prob. gonna do one tomorrow night anyway's. But i'll check out what Bodyslide posted.

@ GKar
Already tried that, and yes they show up in bios, already checked that before posting, they show up during preboot, they sho up in device manager, just not in any program or windows explorer, prob. because of what the device manager state's, something messed up in windows registry for the two drives on the 2nd IDE channel

Oh well... of to destruction and doom!!!!!!

Thanks everyone!!

[Noahtuck]

@ Bodyslide
Thanks again man!!

I DL'd that Guided Help program and it deleted the registry entries automatically and i rebooted and all is well

Now i can get some of my projects burned so i can delete them, then i guess i'm still gonna do a format and fresh install seeing as i need it anyway's 8)

Thanks to everyone who replied

[GKar]

Afterthought, possibly a worn out one. If you get yourself a copy of Ghost or some other disk imaging program this problem won't be a problem anymore. Keeping a current working image gets you up and running in minutes after any kind of disaster. I'm with you on system restore...disabled.

Good to hear you escaped disaster.

[Noahtuck]

Yeah, i thought about ghost and other similar programs, but i have my 400+gig's partitioned into several drives & use my C: drive only for the OS and a few other non important programs.

I keep everything else spread out across my drives so when i do a format and fresh install the only thing i really lose is the OS and I.M. ect. as i backup my e-mail & doc's to a temp folder somewhere else.

[budz]

You may want to just try removing the ide cable from your dvd burners and replace them with new ones before you decide to reinstall xp. I've had ide cables fail before.

[Noahtuck]

You may want to just try removing the ide cable from your dvd burners and replace them with new ones before you decide to reinstall xp. I've had ide cables fail before.

Yeah, i've done that countless times before when i've had HDD's stop showing up
I must have about 1000 of them in a box, full of nothing but okay,seriously, prob about 100 :P
But it was a problem in the registry and i already fixed it, but i'm gonna do a reformat just because i can

[Bodyslide]

@ Bodyslide
Thanks again man!!

I DL'd that Guided Help program and it deleted the registry entries automatically and i rebooted and all is well

Now i can get some of my projects burned so i can delete them, then i guess i'm still gonna do a format and fresh install seeing as i need it anyway's 8)

Thanks to everyone who replied

Glad you got it working......