my computer will be the death of me..

Hey, well its been a good few weeks since i last had computer troubles so as expected im back with more..

for some reason my dvd drive and cdrw just arent being detected in my computer anymore, and wont run anything, yet they appear in BIOs and in control panel>device manager (albeit they have yellow exclamation marks by them.. but theyre there...)

so. im gonna cry until someone can convince me to do otherwise..

AXP 2400
Abit NF-7s v2.0
512 ram
radeon 9600 pro 256
seagate cuda 160gb sata
tagan 380w psu

thaaankyou.

 

Double click them in Device Manager - what's the error displayed?

 

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Thing is ive been using them until now :S only did a windows reinstall the other week..

 

Roll back to the previous drivers, or reinstall the drivers, do the former first.

 

it says there are no previous drivers, and one of them didnt come with a driver cd anyway..

 

I've seen a similar problem before - fixed it by making a system restore point (in case it doesn't work ), removing the drivers completely using Device Manager, and then checking for new hardware. Windows found them and installed them properly once again.

 

oo ok .. .. .lemme go try that..

 

aww it didnt work

came up with 'found new hardware.' in the bottom corner
then recognised them
then i check in my computer and theyre still not there :s

 

I find that, if you boot into safe mode, then remove everything under cdrom drives in the device manager, then reboot as normal that tends to clear this kind of problem up. Either that, or a new ide cable.

 

The fact that they both went at once indicates something common to both drives - replace the cable as suggested above.

 

tis a new cable though aw i cant be asked to open this up right now.

 

change chipset drivers, reset cmos, bang head against wall

 

*sigh* ok ive tried different cables, different IDE slots.. .. .. no joy.

reset CMOS battery? do i stand to lose / screw up something on the computer?

any other suggestions?

 

Try resetting the CMOS as you said. You don't stand to lose anything but be sure to note down all your BIOS settings before you do it...

 

If it's the same cable, did you make sure your drives are set properly for Master/Slave orientation with the jumpers in the back of each drive?

 

i tried a diff cable but i hadnt changed anything with the jumpers so i dont know why it stopped working .. .

. ..

 

That's a thought - have the jumpers fallen off? If you knocked it at some point it's possible (although fairly unlikely).

 

Install the latest nForce drivers. In the installation it'll ask if you want to install the IDE SW drivers or something, say yes and it should be fine

 

hm. replaced CMOS battery.. . ..no avail - i think the jumpers are ok - as much as i can see past the cabling. But i used both devices when installing windows etc a few weeks back? nothing has changed since . .. .

 

I would check that one is master and one is slave, or cable select...Windows sometimes gets surprisingly finicky, and it's usually out of the blue.