Missing optical drive

D

Dayin

n00b
Joined
Sep 16, 2007
Messages
14
Alright, this is on a new build, just been installing drivers today. Windows XP pro, Sata DVD/cd burner, Asus motherboard. Hasn't been connected to the internet yet so I'm not worried about viruses.

I was reinstalling some drivers off of a CD for a sound card (Note Reinstalling, already installed them once and everything was working fine, just not all the speakers were coming on so I figured I'd try installing the drivers again and see what happened) and in the middle of the install I got a blue screen and a physical memory dump.

On reboot everything loaded up just fine, only Windows no longer recognizes the existence of the DVD drive. It still shows up in the bios fine, and I can boot the windows install disk off of it, but when I load windows off of the hard drive it doesn't register that it's there.

I'm sure this is a really simple fix, but if anyone has any suggestions as to the fastest way to get that worked out, I'm open to suggestions. Would I just need to find a CD driver to load onto the computer or is there something else I'm overlooking?
 
Well, no, there is no CD driver besides what Windows installs itself. I have no idea what the problem is. Have you tried disconnecting the drive and plugging it back in? Can you connect it to a different port?

There may be a firmware update you could apply, but these days drives do that in Windows so it would have to be detected first.
 
Reconnecting it has no effect. All four of my Sata slots on my motherboard are being used so I can't switch ports, and I have three hard drives on the computer in a RAID 5, making it difficult to just remove one as well.

The drive spins and the activity light comes on all throughout the POST and the startup sequence, but as soon as windows loads it becomes unresponsive, I can't even open it most of the time. Power is connected to it just fine, doesn't seem to be physically damaged.

I go to my computer and there isn't even a D drive option, just the A floppy and my C drive.
 
Do you see the drive listed in device manager in windows?

You could try removing the drive controllers and reinstalling them.
 
Device shows up as not functioning properly, likely because of drivers. Uninstalling then reinstalling has no effect, registers an error during the install and still won't show up.

Probably just something a windows update will fix when I get it online, or indicative of a more troubling problem?
 
uninstalling/reinstalling the drive? There are no drivers for the drive itself. Rather, there are IDE/SATA controller drivers that need to be reinstalled. Uninstall the controllers and reboot, which should reinstall the drivers.
 
You have 3 hard drives on 3 SATA ports in RAID mode and the DVD drive is in the other SATA port? I wonder if, by using RAID, all of the ports are set up in RAID mode but the DVD drive has to operate in IDE or AHCI mode. Or maybe the RAID driver needs to be set up a certain way to accomodate this?
 
Drexl said:
You have 3 hard drives on 3 SATA ports in RAID mode and the DVD drive is in the other SATA port? I wonder if, by using RAID, all of the ports are set up in RAID mode but the DVD drive has to operate in IDE or AHCI mode. Or maybe the RAID driver needs to be set up a certain way to accomodate this?
Click to expand...

It shouldn't. I have 2 drives in RAID0 and a 3rd storage drive not part of the array, and it works fine. I'l plug my optical drive into the other SATA port later when I get home today and see.
 
When setting up the RAID I specified only the three hard drives. The DVD drive was working fine before my sound driver reinstall, so at the moment I'm writing it off as a driver incompatibility (Or possibly accidental corruption issue) and I'm gonna see if a windows update won't fix it when I get it online. That won't be for a couple of weeks, but it's the best I've got as no amount of driver reinstalling is having any effect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top