cd and cd-rw drives not showing . . . hopeless

Hey! My CD drive and CD-RW drives aren't shown in My Computer, or Device Manager, or Computer Management (in Admin. Tools, in Control Panel). I scanned my computer for viruses, deleted about 20—I used both Norton Antivirus and Antivir XP. Still the drives are missing. About a day or so before I noticed the drives were missing, I got Comcast broadband—I installed a network card then, and I took it out today, in case it might be causing the problem, but nothing happened. I tried that Registry trick that is on lots of websites, the one with Upperfilters and Lowerfilters, but that didn't do anything. I checked BIOS, and under IDE, only my hard drive was listed. The other entries (for Primary 1, Secondary 0, etc., or whatever they are) were grayed out, and I couldn't select or access them. So I got a FlashBIOS thing from Dell.com, put it on a boot disk, and ran the program, but nothing happened. I even uninstalled iTunes and Quicktime, which I had updated a bit before I noticed the drives were missing. Still nothing.

My computer is a Dell Dimension 4500 with Win XP (SP2). It's about 3 years old. My CD drive hasn't worked in a long time—I'd put a CD in, and it would go crazy reading it, then my computer would freeze up, only to go back to normal when I ejected the CD—but the drive letter has always appeared in My Computer. I've never had a problem with my CD-RW drive before. I can open and close the doors on both drives, and the indicator lights flash on both of them (when the doors open/close and when a CD is put in), and the drives whirr a bit, as if beginning to read them, but stop after a second or two. Also, when my computer boots, I can hear it access the floppy drive, but it doesn't do anything with the CD drives.

I'm desperate here. I don't have the money to do a major overhaul of this thing, and I can't wipe the harddrive or anything, since I can't burn CDs to backup my files . . . Does anybody have any idea why this might have happened? I can understand it if the drives stopped working but still appeared on My Computer and Device Manager; it seems, however, to be the other way around . . . I'd greatly appreciate some help here :-D.


Thanks!

 

Well, I don't think they're being detected at all, whether or not it's before Windows starts. The drives are physically present and connected, though. And I can't see them in BIOS. In the IDE menu, there are entry slots or whatever for Primary etc., and Secondary etc.—4 total—but 3 of them are grayed out, all but the first one (the hard drive) and I can't move the cursor over the 3 grayed out ones.

I haven't done anything with the motherboard drivers . . . should I? Where can I find the specs for my motherboard?

Yes, I did try the tip in the support.microsoft.com link you gave.

I don't think I saw the drives in Device Manager in Safe Mode.

 

I too am having this problem,including that I can no longer view dvds,or use my cd-rom as a burner! i tried installing a :"buffalow" portable burner but will notinstall or burn,can any one helpme! Desparet! Don't want to throw away my Win98Se OS.

 

Folks, this thread is from 2005!
If you have a problem, start a new thread.