PC hardware: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help!
- 1/30/09 3:45 PM
Dead Drives
by mlesterstuckey - 1/17/09 2:26 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This might sound ironic, but a few weeks ago I suffered the same thing. I couldn't do anything with my DVD/CD drive. I just would not recognize it at all, no matter what I did. It showed that it was on when I inserted a disc but from there it was dead in the water. To make a long frustrated story short, the drive was DEAD and I installed a new DVD/CD drive and now it is working perfectly. It is not hard to install a new drive yourself. I am sure you can do it yourself with little or no trouble. Hope this helps and good luck.
Unlikely
by aztut - 1/31/09 7:38 AM In reply to: Dead Drives by mlesterstuckeyWhat are the odds that BOTH drives died at the same time?!?! Uninstalling the drives and rebooting fixes this problem 9 out of 10 times.
DVD/CD NOT THERE ANYMORE
by JGRAY1946 - 1/17/09 2:30 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
GO TO CONTROL PANEL CLICK SYSTEMS, THEN DEVICE MANAGER. GO TO DVD/CD ROM DRIVES AND RIGHT CLICK AND UNINSTALL THE DRIVES, CLICK OUT AND REBOOT AND LET THE COMPUTER REINSTALL THEM ITSELF.
Thank You
by paulineusa - 2/10/09 11:49 PM In reply to: DVD/CD NOT THERE ANYMORE by JGRAY1946Hi. Thank you so very much for your solution. Have a great day!
DVD/CD NOT THERE ANYMORE
by franciscolugo - 2/14/09 10:39 AM In reply to: DVD/CD NOT THERE ANYMORE by JGRAY1946I just want to double check; if i uninstall the dvd/cd drive once I reboot the computer it will automatically will download it again?
Do I have to use my recovery disks?
Re: DVD-drive
by Kees Bakker - 2/14/09 10:53 AM
In reply to: DVD/CD NOT THERE ANYMORE by franciscolugo
'Uninstall' and 'downloading' aren't really the right terms, but, yes, if you delete those devices from Device Manager and then reboot, Windows will recognize them and add them to Device Manager again.
Kees
This happened to me & I found a fix on the web
by hgg47 - 1/17/09 2:46 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I am running Vista Ultimate on a Dell tower PC. The fix described related to XP but it did fix my problem. I didn't save the URL but made a screen dump of the details (& can share this jpg if requested).
The description said "CD & DVD drives will suddenly cease to exist in XP systems. Most often this has been reported in association with program installations or Windows updates, but it has also happened for no apparent reason"
You need to run regedit - [start] [run] [regedit] then go to....
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
Open the entry for the key:
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Look for entries under the data column for UpperFilters & LowerFilters and delete these entries. A typical entry for the LowerFilters could be something like "iomdisk PxHelp20".
Just clear these fields then reboot (would be a good idea to use a registry backup utility before making the changes, just in case!).
After the reboot, the DVD drive letter reappeared but you will need to reinstall any burning software (e.g. Nero) as this fails to find the newly reinstated drive.
Good luck!
Good Fix!
by alweg - 1/31/09 8:36 AM In reply to: This happened to me & I found a fix on the web by hgg47Had this problem and tried many things before finding this fix. Great!!! Worked right away. Would never have dawned on me to try poking into the Regitry. Instructions were right on and had no trouble understanding what to do.
Thanks!!!
Lost optical drives, CD / DVD
by Starfire32 - 2/15/09 7:27 AM In reply to: This happened to me & I found a fix on the web by hgg47Hey,
I find that I don't have to delete the upper and lower filters to correct this problem if I don't install or update or upgrade I-Tunes. The culpret, at leist in my PC, I wrote them a letter, to them, about the Issue to which I got no response, no respect for windows I guess. I hate to bad mouth MAC, but, I don't like to play around in the registry any more than I have to. Am I the only one or has anyone else noticed this?
SPK
Drives not recognized.
by HLydick - 1/17/09 3:07 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
One possibility...and what "killed" my cd drive...is a bad data cable or loose power cable to the drive. I'm running a six-year-old P4 Gateway, and we leave it on almost all the time. A few months ago it got noisy, and began to overheat. Once I popped the side panel, the pwer supply fan wasn't running. New power supply, auxiliary cooling fan, and new ribbon cables to both the hard drives and the optical drives and the problem was solved.
If you're at all comfortable inside the case, this is a quick, easy fix. Data cables cost about $5 each.
Good luck, and post back with the answer that worked for you.
"Lost" optical drives
by Zouch - 1/17/09 3:08 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi Gary,
sounds like a hardware problem of some sort. It could be very trivial or not economically fixable. You would get a clue if you knew how the DVD and CD drives were configured. From the specifications for the machine, it supports an IDE hard drive, a DVD-RW and a CD, i.e. three drives (the optical drives will be IDE also). This tells you that you have two IDE controllers on the motherboard (fairly typical). IDE controllers support two drives each, the hard drive will be on the primary controller but there are two possibilities for the optical drives, they could both be on the secondary controller or may be split across controllers. The first is more likely and would fit your symptoms better. There is an outside possibility that the power supply to the optical drives is daisy chained (i.e. one power lead is split to feed both optical drives) but I wouldn't expect that of Sony as standard.
The first thing to check is whether the BIOS can see the drives. When you power on the machine, the splash screen will tel you what key to press to get into the BIOS (Basic Input Output System). It varies by manufacturer, sometimes Delete or F2 or F10 but there are other possibilities. When you get into the BIOS screens, look for the disk drives and look for the DVD and CD. If neither are present, you have a hardware problem. If they are present, you could try booting up into Windows, go to Start-Settings-Control Panel-System-Hardware Tab and look for the DVD and CD drives. Right click each of them and their controller in turn (Assuming they are on the same controller) select properties and disable them. DO NOT disable the controller with the hard disk on it! Reboot the system and let Windows re-discover them - it will reinstall the drivers and that may fix the problem. I don't think this is the most likely option but you can do this without taking the machine apart.
If the machine is still under warranty, don't do anything else - contact the warranty manager. Since this model is discontinued, I'll assume the warranty is long since exhausted.
OK, if that didn't fix it, the next step depends on how comfortable with working on the hardware itself - if you are not, take it to the shop. If you are (and I'll assume you know all the precautions when working inside the covers) check the power leads to the drives either with a multimeter or just listen to them when you power on the machine - you'll hear them attempt to spin up if there is power to them.
WARNING - BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WITH POWER ON AND THE COVERS OFF!
If they have power, turn the power off and unplug the mains cable and check the signal cable, either a flat grey one of a round one with a big flat connector on the drive. Particularly, check that the motherboard end of the cable is connected to the motherboard - I have seen them work loose or even drop out if the machine vibrates a bit. Since both drives are affected, it isn't likely that the drive end of the cable is a problem. It's worth pulling out the plugs and re-seating them, which "cleans" the pins. Be extremely careful not to bend the pins when you do this.
If they are still not working, try a new signal cable if you have (or can borrow) one.
If they are still not working, you may have a failed controller on the motherboard. It is unlikely that a motherboard replacement would be economic, even if they were available on this discontinued machine.
But all is not lost. Since the hard drive is still working, the IDE signal cable should have a spare connector plug on it. You could plug this into one of the optical drives - the DVD would be the obvious choice but that may be plugged as a Master - you want it to be either Slave or Cable Select. Or another option, if you have a spare expansion slot, would be to get a standalone IDE controller and drive your optical drives off that.
If none of this works the only options left would be to get an external DVD/RW drive or biting the bullet and looking for a replacement PC.
Good luck!
I wanted to compliment Zouch on his troubleshooting acumen
by airakalanr - 2/1/09 7:50 AM In reply to: "Lost" optical drives by ZouchI wanted to say I liked the approach Zouch takes.
Verify BIOS knows the devices exist.
Verify the Device Manager knows the devices exist.
Verify that Windows thinks the devices work. An absence of Exclamation marks: red crosses in the Device Manager tree.
Verfiy Drivers, and system troubleshooting.
Then investigate hardware possibles.
Very good.
"Lost" Optical Drives
by frescar_11 - 2/2/09 4:25 AM In reply to: "Lost" optical drives by ZouchZouch every thing you've mentioned is correct, I had encounter all this kind of problem but in addition problem occur also when the software/hardware is not functioning well cause and force windows to eleminate malfunctioned unit. Thank you very much!
Use your Hardware Device tree
by ultrasoftware - 1/17/09 3:43 PM In reply to: My PC stopped recognizing both my DVD and CD drives, help! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Open Device Manager by going to "My Computer" icon, right click on it,
select Properties, then select Hardware tab, click on Device Manager button. Find out the non working devices on the tree by navigating it manually. If the device has a red cross, then it should be
a driver o hardware problem. Try out to refresh all devices by going to Action->Sacan for hardware changes, selecting that option
will cause the OS to scan for all devices again, that could
solve the issue, but if the red cross appears again, then there is serious problem with the driver or hardware is damaged.
To discard the driver, try by right clicking the device (from the device manager you already have open), select properties (there is a troubleshoot button also that could help you), select driver tab, select roll back driver. If it does not work you can try the following (but it is risky since it would affect your HD original driver and you could lose it permanently, so do it under your own risk) select Driver Details and get the exact version of the driver you are using, try to find out the driver on the Internet, once you find it out, use the Update Driver button, see if that helps.
You can try re-installing the DVD or CD from the installer CD provided with your CD-ROM in case you have it, if not, then try downloading it from the internet.
If that doesn't work, then it probably it is a problem with your Hardware (mother board or CD, or PnP functionality of windows.)
I hope that helps.
FIDDLING WITH THE REGISTRY (OR NOT FIDDLING WITH THE REGISTR
by bossewitch - 1/31/09 5:23 PM In reply to: Use your Hardware Device tree by ultrasoftwaresince most of us are brain-dead regarding the registry, i keep my fingers and mind out of it.
on computershopper.com (downloads) there are several freeware registry
fix programs that can backup and restore the registry, as well as fix "regular" issues. they are best of breed.
of course, these programs do not know about the cd-rom stuff. nevertheless, i would try to download and run the freeware registry programs to clean up the entire registry, before dealing with the cd-rom issues.
examples i have used to fix the registry include the following:
1. eusing free registry ...
2. wise registry cleaner
akiva in ny
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