well I have a very weird problem... both my cdrw and dvd suddenly stopped working... the bios sees them, they don't appear in 'my computer' but they do in the device manager (with yellow ?). when I check the properties I see that: "Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)" it never happened to me before... I've updated adaware and norton and scanned the system but it didn't help... I've changed the ide cable but nothing happened. tried uninstalling them and reinstalling them... no good. I find it hard to beleive that both drives died at the same time... (I'll go check them in another computer just to be sure)... don't know what to do next... could it be the second ide slot? could it be IR interference? (got a window and a logitech ir receiver next to it) anyone?
are they both on the same IDE channel? Recently my third channel on my mobo went suddenly bad... just, whatever is on it doesn't work. So I use channels 1, 2, and 4. Try that out
well that is not it because I've tried my dvd on channel 1 (hdd on 0) that was on the ide1 (channel 2) and it's not good... it's not the power line because it opens... not the channel because 0 and 1 on ide0 works and the dvd still don't work... I'll try in another comp... but I still don't know what to do next...
if neither drive works in a seperate comp, I don't think there's much more you can do besides scrap em for parts
I've tried them in my other comp and they works... so it's my system the problem... not the ide channels... not the ide cables... maybe it's windows? the thing is that I don't want to put my backup because I don't want to reinstall FFXI ... that's a 5gig installation + 3 hours of live update...
omg, you just talked me out of trying that game! Try keeping one out and just put the other in. /shrug, I'm running low on ideas, I'm thinking it could be power problems associated with running both at the same time (like, the PS might be on it's way out). What is the wattage on your PS in there?
well I got a 300W but that's not the problem since I run it for 2 years and I never got any problem. even when using one optical drive instead of two they don't work...
try a different os to be sure its windows and not your computer. Personally I would either get a dos bootdisk with cd rom support or pop in a knoppix cd
Do the lights on the front of the drives come on when you turn on the computer? If not then more than likely that part of the power supply has died. I find it hard to believe that two drives died at the exact same time.......unless something killed them (PSU) I believe BIOS will find 'em even if they aren't powered up, but windows needs them to actually spin up to see them. (if you have ever noticed that when you click on my computer for the first time each session the optical drives will rev up for a second or two) Cheers!
The first thing you should try is booting from a bootable CD. If that does/doesn't work it narrows down the problem. My drives failed once due to the ide channel being bust, the bios would pick them up but some letters of the name would be incorrect eg QIONEER or whatever, can't remember what it came up as. Windows would not show them at all.
OK, the lot of you are missing out on what he has said previously. 1. The drives DO appear in his BIOS 2. The drives DO work in another computer 3. The powersupply DOES work 4. It is NOT the IDE channel So, what does this narrow it down to? Operating System! Try system restore (sounds like a core windows file got fudged up allong the line somewhere). If that doesn't work, try the automatic repair on the Windows install disk. If even that doesn't work, get out your boot disk, it's gonna be formattin country! (sorry, I know you didn't want to hear that, but thats the only way) Good luck! And I do hope you can get this working again without having to do a full reinstall.
Yup. If you copy the correct registry keys and save the install directory for things you want to keep (easy for me, I have Windows on a separate partition for when these things happen) then when you reinstall you can just merge the keys in again and carry on without a reinstall of games etc. Unless the installer is really awful and sticks bits of itself in your system folders etc...
I think it is the IDE cables personally. Try out some different ones. I really don't think it is the OS because it is a core part of the OS, standard drivers that work without intervention. They wouldn't suddenly stop working, if your using XP go to; Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Storage and have a scout round there to see if you can find anything. That is usually for HDDs, optical drives just work.
Note: it is not the IDE cables either, as he HAS tried it on different lines. And yes, it could be windows, I've had computers before where the optical drives just dissappeared, all's I had to do was a system restore and they re-appeared. Reading = Good
well it was windows... I resigned myself to reinstall my backup... I've thought about the registry but it seems that FFXI put keys everywhere in there... so I gave up and resigned myself to reinstall FFXI.. . sincerely I more pissed about the fact that I have to reinstall FFXI than I would have been if the drives were dead.... anyways thx guys
