Lost my 'E' drive- for CDs

Hi all
I tried to run a CD in my RICOH MP7083A R/RW drive but the puter says - E drive has been deleted. This was my CD drive.
How do I get the E drive back?, I must have deleted in the endess tidying up that I do .
It is running 2000 ME windows professional.
The drive appears to be fine, the light comes on and the drawer opens
Thank for any suggestions

 

I'm sorry, but these are two different versions of Windows: one version is Windows ME (or Windows Millenium Edition), the other version is Windows 2000 Professional. In other words, Windows 2000 ME Pro doesn't make sense. Please clear this up and we'll try to help; right click My Computer and click Properties to find out which version of Windows you're actually using.
:-D

 

Thanks
The system information reads
Microsoft Windows 2000
5.00 2195
Service Pack 4

But on the screen ,where I log off, the picture shows Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
and it has the 'professional' features of a log in - etc.

Sorry if this is confusing.
I have keep this up to date with the updates.

Thanks again

 

OK- so you have Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4. Go to the Device Manager and tell us what is listed under DVD/CD-ROM Drives. If there's any question marks ? or exclamation points ! in any areas other than the DVD/CD section tell us what they are. So, right click on the device listed under DVD/CDROM Drives and select Uninstall. Restart the PC. If that doesn't bring the drive back, click on this link, download the "2000 optical drive fix", unzip it, and double click the resulting .REG file to merge it into the registry. If you get a security warning like "are you sure you want to merge this into the registry?" say "yes". Restart the PC. If that doesn't work, let us know and we'll try something else.
:-D
Good luck!

 

Thanks for your patience.
I have looked at Device Manager- there is no indication of a CD drive listed, only floppy disk drive.
I have followed the instruction on the '2000 Optical drive fix', but there is still no 'E' drive listed on the computer , nor a CD listed under the Device Manger.
The 'fix' seemed very short for something that was zipped, I just wonder if I did that right.
In fact I could not click the link, it gave a no access page. So I typed in the name to the address bar on the internet and got the link that way.
Very puzzling .
I do not have the origianl operating system disk now, and could not load it anyway!
Any other suggestion?
Thanks for the trouble
Bye

 

Something else you might try.

When you go into device manager at the very top listing right click on the computer name, then click scan for hardware changes. What should happen is that the found new hardware wizard should show up. If it doesn't, your drive could be bad, and yes, I've seen a drive be bad even though it appears to spin and open and close on the tray.

The only other things I found are this article on Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060 - while it says XP and Vista, there is an article at the top for Win2000 and the Vista/XP article has some similar fixes.

Check your BIOS and make sure that it's being recognized in there. If it is, then likely one of the suggested fixes here should work.


Edit: Also, you might, that is MIGHT, be able to goto the manufacturers website and download and reinstall the drivers. I say might because you have a Win2000 OS which means your computer is quite old and it might not be available, but it's at least worth a shot.

 

Yup. If the drive doesn't appear in the BIOS, then it is either totally dead, or is not hooked up correctly.

 

so what's the verdict. Inquiring minds want to know!

 

Hello
Sorry for the delay in responding, eventually I took the machine casing off and poked around. The IDE cable was not plugged into the Motherboard correctly
Now I have a recognised E drive, but it has yet to play an audio disc, so I will try the other fixes again.
I have this 'disc detector' programme , I switched it on and off but no success, the contects of the disc are listed on teh screen, but it is nor playing. The computer does play sound, as I can hear things on You Tube, or from the BBC site.
So I will continue the search
Thanks for the suggestions, it must be frustrating trying to fix things from afar, it is sitting here!
Thanks again

 

Yes I checked that, it is a thin cable from CD to sound card.
I went onto the RICOH site and downloaded a driver, but that still does not work.
When I open Winamp, I can see that the disc is playing as time elapses and the winamp screen shows 'activity'.
I have the speakers plugged into the card, thegreen plug. There are black and red ones with nothing in them.
Very puzzling.
If you can think of anything else , please let me know.
Thanks for your assistence.
Bye

 

Success!. I had a look at the sound card. There are three sockets and teh audio cable from the CD was plugged into the centre one. I moved it to the left one and it works, sound from the speakers. Great. I do not know why this occurred, I had not touched the sound card, all I did , originally, was add more RAM to the Motherboard, that is when the IDE cable become out of its socket.
( I am nt sure what the other sockets do on the card either)
So many thanks to all that have read and attempted to solve my problem.