Drives Don't Exist

nina_2

Helloooo

Can anyone please help me?

I have a cd drive and cd-writer drive on my pc and neither are recognised. When I go to the control panel they are not there. They have been for years and years but they have suddenly disappeared.
The cd drive is original and came with the pc and the writer was installed years ago. I have never had any problems with either before now.
The drives simply do not exist.
I have done a complete virus scan of the pc and no threat or viruses found.

Please make sure any replies are spoken slowly and that you take care to use small words. As this techno stuff confuses me

Many thanks in advance

timm_2

Hi Tina.

Sounds to me like you have an ide cable come loose. This is a ribbon type cable which connects both of your drives to the computer motherboard (the big circuit board thingy).

If you are confident enough to open your PC housing (after unplugging the mains cable from the rear of the unit), locate the rear of the two drives, you will see the cable (around 2 inches wide) plugged into both drives. Follow the cable down, and it should also be plugged into the motherboard. See if it feels loose, or looks crooked. Carefully but firmly push the connector down until it seats squarely and firmly.

See if that works (get a friend to help you if you don't fancy doing it).

monterey_2

Not sure if your area has this, but in our area there is a computer company that comes and looks at computer problems on a No Fix-No Fee basis.

If you are not confident of solving this yourself, and don't have a friend who is up to speed on computers, that might be a good way forward. Check your local paper?

M

nina_2

Thank you very much for your time! I'm going to have a go and keep helpful phone no's nearby in case! Well if I don't have a go I'll never know!

amcluesent

>but they have suddenly disappeared.<

Have you installed any software just before-hand? Some games use weird anti-piracy systems which could mess-up a system. Otherwise, sound like a cable has come loose.

russellgreeno

also check the manuals and see if your jumpers are set to master and slave properly. If they are not then this could happen.

When you turn your pc on, you will usually see a message which says PRESS DEL FOR SETUP (or something similar). Press this next time you boot your pc.

In the BIOS menus, there will be one that lists all drives on your PC (note this is well before Windows loads up and tells you). It should also say if you have two masters or two slaves. If you have then this is the problem.

Be careful when in the BIOS menu, it is possible to kill your pc (well nearly) by fiddling in here, only save settings if you know what you are doing, otherwise always QUIT WITHOUT SAVING.

MercilessKiller

There could be many reasons for drives not been detected.
1) Loose cables
2) Jumper settings wrong (unlikely due to randomly stopping one day)
3) conflicting drivers
etc..

Have you install any hardware devices recently?

If you live around the staffordshire area, or the buckinghamshire area, I could come take a look at no charge of course (pm me if so). I'll be able to advise you on if its to do with the drives itself, the cables (which can easily be replaced), or your windows software (which can either be easy or difficult to fix :P)

Hope that helps.

On russell's point, as I previously said it is unlikely that it is anything to do with jumpers. It would not explain why it works one day, and not work the next day unless you have messed around with the internals of your pc (which i assume you havent...)

However his tip of looking in the bios is useful. By pressing DEL at bootup, the initial blue screen should tell you ALL devices it can recognise.

It will clearly say:
Primary Master:
Primary Slave:
Secondary Master:
Secondary Slave:
etc...

I assume both cd drives will be set on the Secondary IDE cables, thus master and slave for secondary should include the make and model of your CD drivers.

If there is the words <Nothing Found> or similar appears, it would seem a cable is missing, or unluckily both drives decided to stop working