Non Existent DVD-ROM and CD_RW?

Hey guys,

First time posting at Major Geeks. So far I've enjoyed navigating your site. I've looked through other postings and can't find anything quite like my problem.

My Computer has a Samsung DVD-Rom SD612 drive (designated D: drive) and a Sony CD-RW Burner (designated E: drive). Problem is recently, it doesn't seem to know it. The drives seem to physically dissapear! 95% of the time when the computer boots it fails to recognize them. The D: and E: drives do not show up in Device Manager, Belarc Advisor, or even on "My Computer". Half the time I can't even get the drives to open by pushing the eject buttons on the tower.

By fluke, I realized that sometimes I can get the computer to recognize the drives by costantly pushing eject during start up. But whenever that happens the computer freezes up very soon after.

I'm not even sure where to start...here, I guess?

Here are some specs on my computer if it helps. It's about 5 years old.

Operating System: Windows 98 SE
Processor: 733 MHz Intel Pentium III
Drives: 30 GB Hard Drive, 3.5 inch Floppy, Samsung DVD-Rom SD612, Sony CD-RW CRX140E
Ram: 128 MB

 

welcome to MG!

have you checked the connections to make sure they didn't come loose somehow? sounds to me like one or both of your drives is failing ... i would try disconnecting one then resetting the jumper on the other to single ... then booting up with only one drive then do the same with the next ... just to see if one of them still works

also ... just out of curiosity does it take a long time to boot? specifically is there a lonfg pause in between the BIOS screen and the window 98 loader screen?

 

I checked the connections and everything seems fine. You are right, the computer does take an extra bit to boot up? Is that the sign of another problem?

Something tells me I'm going to be replacing my drives. Yes?

 

"i would try disconnecting one then resetting the jumper on the other to single ... then booting up with only one drive then do the same with the next ... just to see if one of them still works"

This is the first thing I would try to see if either of the drives are bad. But also, try booting with neither of the drives to see if your computer speeds up a bit.

 

Disconnecting is easy enough but how do I go about resetting the jumper to single on the drives?

 

On the top of the there should be a label on each drive that will tell you how to set the jumpers to single/master, slave, or cable select. At least on most (if not all) drives I've seen do.

 

Also -- if you can try putting the drives on the Primary IDE (where the hdds are) ... & try swapping cables with the hdd too ... it could either be something as stupid as a cable ... or the controller on the motherboard going bad.

Did you recently have any software changes? Uninstalling Roxio has been known to make drives "disappear" ... there is a MS article about some registry keys that you need to delete ... try that as wall.

Do the drives show up in BIOS? If they do NOT, you can forget about any SW fixes & focus on Hardware ... (or the BIOS ... flash that, if you can ... instructions on that should be on the webpage for your motherboard manufacturer).