Alright, so basically this morning I woke up and decided to install a really, really old game - Stronghold.

I was going to install it, when the autoplay didn't pop up and I started wondering what was wrong, and decided to manually boot it.
Then I saw that my two optical drives weren't on the list. I got scared, and restarted the computer - nothing.
I checked the actual hardware by ripping out the case, and everything was connected.
I ran it through BIOS - twice - and it still isn't detecting.

Is there something wrong...? I'd like to have my drive back.

Did you tried removing the CD and restarting? If so, try disconnecting and reconecting everything again. I had that problem with a damaged CD.

Wait...Did both dissapeared?? That's strange for me..... Well, I have only one optical drive.

Its not the CD thats dead. Its the DRIVE. And they both died. It might be a virus on a program I installed recently, so I might just go ahead and format my computer if its going to take too long.

They might be jumpered incorrectly.. But I doubt that that would have happened to both at once, sounds like a virus to me.

Check in Device Manager and see if they're disabled, lots of viruses do that.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that they have the "!" yellow warning symbol. Apparantly the drivers are up to date and XP can't find any problems.

The virus could be installing incorrect drivers for the devices, try completely reinstalling the drivers.

How do you reinstall an Optical Drive?

I wanted to format it, but even that wasn't possible since it can't read the CD.

In Device Manager, uninstall it, and when you restart, I would boot under Safe Mode and then reinstall the drivers from there.

Safe mode loads with all this shit.

(0)Multi(1)...........................................Windows\sys\dll...

Further more, I unistalled the devices, but they "Reinstall" upon entering XP, so it might be a virus.

Yeah, it should do that, after a while it finishes up.

XP should automatically reinstall them, but I'm thinking the virus might be interfering with the installation, hence starting up in Safe Mode.

Alright, I'll try it again in a while.

I tried what you said, but it still doesn't work.

Upon uninstalling and rebooting, it "reinstalls" itself. Drivers are up to date.

My dad says it might be something wrong with the Hardware or the BIOS is fucked up.

EDIT: System Restore seemed to fix it nicely. I'm going to be creating an image so this never happens again.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 20 2009, 4:28 am by Vi3t-X.

Try this in the device manager.

1) Right-click the CD or DVD drive and select "Update Driver"

2) If it asks to connect to windows update to search for the driver, you can just select no and then next, since you won't need any driver from online for this.

3) Select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)" and click next.

4) Select "Don't search, I will choose the driver to install." and click next.

5) Click next and then finish.

This will reinstall the drivers for the CD or DVD drive, if it is needed. I've seen at least couple computers that once needed this.


Oh, you got it fixed while I was typing that. But if it ever happens again, try this.

THREAD REVIVAL.

Ok. Imaging software is not working, my computer is getting excessively slow, and none of these methods are working again.


1) The Optical Drives are once again NOT fuctional.

2) System Restore consistantly fails, saying that it could not be restored.

3) All said procedures have been attempted, also in safe mode, and have FAILED.

4) Internet still works, but is exessively slow (Well, IE8 and FF3 are excessively slow), though I have yet to try out Chrome.

5) I'm still depressed. Someone halp?

search the company's site of whatever brand ur comp is for this error. My network drivers all started disappearing not to long ago and I found out it was due to a known defect in the hardware which they fixed for free.

Clean out your startup and delete everything in your prefetch folder and see if that at least speeds up your computer, we'll deal with the drives afterwords

Custom Built.

Then search the name(s)/model number(s) of your drives.

i had this problem, i just googled: "(name of driver) doesn't work"
and one of the link shows a way to fix it

but i had to fix mine through regedit and some other stuff i don't remember
for me the problem was caused because of some files that didn't let the driver to work

Problem solved... in a fucking long process.

Booted Linux through USB. Turns out it was a Windows only virus.