Computer can't find my CD-r Or CD-rw

Hi helpful people,

computer says i have no cd players when i do have a cd-r and a cd-rw they are on they have nice little green lights on them and they spin up when i put something in them (I do mean a disc, not like i try putting carrots in them, although thats starting to sound like a better idea)

They did show some time yesterday, both of them and i thought great so i put a disc in and it played fine. then i turned a light switch on in the house and all the power in the house triped out. when i got everything booted up again they were gone again.

I am running windows xp home. 5.1.2600 with service pack1
I do have a have Real VNC installed if anyone wants to have a look. (and i feel i can trust them)

 

check your device manager and see if your cd rom drives have any errors associated with them. i.e. YELLOW EXCLAMATION POINTS..

 

It's the same in the device manager it cant find them of regonise them to say there is a fault, I try the wizard and that cant find any new hardware either.

I do have Virtual DAEMON Manager which is reconised, do you think this could overide my real ons?

Regards
Terry

 

Can you see your drives in Safe Mode?

 

Thank you for your reply,

I put mi condom on and opened in safe mode, but alas still no joy!

I Have the Lavalys-Everest-benchtest thing and that could not find them either. the only device it shows is the Generic DVD-ROM SCS CDROM Device which i used when i downloaded office 2003 it shows as OFFICE11 (D

I thought that they might have come disconnected some how and was gonna take a look inside put they show up a few hours ago befor i blew the house power

If you need any info, let me know and i will check it out with my EVEREST thing.

When i was checking the difference restore sections it told me that it could not restore a drive that had been turned off or uninstalled, i dont know if this was a genarel warning or bit of info or if i have acctuly turned somthing off.
and do not know where to look to turn it on as the comp says its not there anyway.

Regards
Terry

 

When you first boot up and you see the details for your hard disk listed on the screen, do you see your CD drives then?

If yes then we know it's a Windows issue.

If not go into BIOS setup and make sure your IDE Primary/Secondary Master/Slave are all set to Auto-detect (or similar wording).

 

That was nice and quick,

When i start up it takes its time and it has 3 hit esc if i dont want to do something.

It only dectes Pri master
Pri slave = Not Detected
Sec master = Not deteced
Sec slave = Not detected

Sorry I dont know anything about this bloke BIOS how do i get into him to check?

On my start up manager i have ctfmon.exe disabled, is this needed?
Regards
terry

 

Can you go into a lot more detail about that - Is it giving you error messages?

Usually you hit the Delete key after booting starts. What kind of PC is this?

 

Sorry i have been so long looking at stuff, this is what i found.

When i hit deleat to enter BIOS for the first time. Abig blue screen with stuff that looked inportance so i did not touch anything as i did not see anything that said IDE Primary/seconary master/slave but i think they must be set to auto detect as the second part that you asked about info on is the black sreen when it is starting. The black screen when it runs though bits this is where it has the PRI Master = Dectected and the other not detected.
when it is trying to detecte them the pri slave, sec master and sec slave It come up as
Press <ESC> to abort_ with the end underscore thing flashpng. this take some time then comes up not detected on the three items mentioned.

Not sure what kind of machine info you need.
AMIBIOS (c) 2000 american megtrends inc K7SEM release 01/03/2003 pro 1300

AMD DURON (tm) Processer
945 Mhz
240MB of Ram

windows xp home edition version 2002 with service pack1

Is this easyer on yahoo messenage or msn?
Regards
Terry

 

I'd still like to see what those are set to in BIOS.

Go in there again and look thru the different menus, such as Advanced, Chipset, etc. Don't worry you can always 'Exit discarding changes' so you won't break anything.

 

Ok I wnt in the difference sections and could not find any thing that said advance chipset or any normal chips or any salt and vinager to put on them either LOL. (well its not funny. i need my roms for work)

IN These section i found this (dont no if its helful or not its all over my head) so much to write down so i mark the parts that are disabled *D

CMOS SETUP
pri master: auto = 32bit mode ON
pri slave : auto = - " -
sec master : auto = -"-
sec slave : auto = - " -

ADVANCED SETUP
quickboot = enabled
1st boot divive = IDE-0
2nd boot divice = floppy
3rd boot divice = cdrom
smart for hard dics = disabled
boot num-lock = on

PCI/PLUG & PLAY SETUP
pci ide bus master = disabled

FETURES SETUP
onboard ir port = disabled
usb function for dos = disabled

on start up again it starts with 262144KB ok 16MB shared memory

Now i dont know what any of that means or if it is even helpful but it looks good to me.
regards
Terry

 

Good job, this is what I was interested in:

So BIOS settings are OK.

It's acting like they're not connected, so the next thing to do is open the case and check the cable connections between the motherboard and the drives. On each end the cables are flat and wide. It might be one cable connecting both drives to the motherboard.

You said they spin up so that means the 4-pin power connections are OK.

 

ok here i go,

but i might never see you again LOL

Terry
Can you do brain surgery over the internet? I gusse so.

 

You can do it Terry

I'm not sure, but what I suspect is one cable connecting both drives to the motherboard that is loose at the motherboard end.

 

WOW i'm back and alive and with CD-R/RW working

did not want to push my luck with the CD-R, i might later when i have got some of this work down loaded, Thank you.

They seemed to be secure but i looked in the installation manual and the pins seemed to be the wrong way round. you know where you have ::: cs (cable select) sl (slave) ma (master) well the rw had the pins at the right hand end for master but was joined as a slave and the top one had the pins for a slave but i line as the master. so i unpluged the top one as it is just a rom i joint direct to the motherboard as master.
On boot up which was a lot quicker this time as it detected Sec Master straight away.

It is strange.

It must work the other way round as i loaded all the programs to the pc useing the drive and it kept comming and going but must be tempermental or cause malfuction down the line.

So thank you very much ALANC XXxx
should i just set up a restor point to make sur they stay this way or do anything else so they dont go away again?
can i add you to my buddy list (my first buddy)

Many thanks
Terry.

 

Good work! Yes you can add me to your buddy list

Strange, I agree. Ususally when drives aren't jumpered correctly they don't work at all. When you have time, jumper the CD-R as slave and connect it to the free connector on the same cable as the CD-RW and then they should both work.

A restore point won't help cuz this is strictly a hardware issue.

 

once again thank you.

i will connect it later once i have this work data done.

do you know about heat as i have bolted on a new fan to the board and when i was in that blue page i saw the temp (50degree's) do you know if this is good or bad?

terry

 

Depends which temp it is. CPU temp would be OK. Case temp would be a little high.

 

Damnit alanc.. wait til you have kids and you can't get to finish following upon posts..

Good Job

 

Thanks kannoli kid