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Ok, earlier i posted that my hard drive was failing and it was, i took it into the shop and had my computer worked on. well today i got it back and now i cant physically "see" my D or G drives which are my cd drive and my cd burner. but, when i restart my computer they reappear and i can use them. why are they randomly appearing and disappearing?? this is really bothering me. thanx bye.
Hi Tex,
Let me get this straight.........
When you boot you have a D and a G drive, but then they dissappear and you have to re-boot to get them back?
What is your "E" drive and "F" drive?
As they are just CD drives I would be inclined to delete them, check that you have master/slave or cable select correctly configured with the jumpers then re-boot and let Windows re-discover them.
Cheers
C,F,E are my harddrives they work fine but, D and G are my drives with removeable storeage ie. cd drive/cd burner and those 2 randomly disappear and reappear. im very confused as to why. the guy who worked on my computer updated my bios and did a few other big changes. im not quite sure of everything he did. im running a dell P4 with 384 megs of RAM and im in the process of updating again to SP2 and getting fully patched.
Can't say I have come across this before. My first move would be to get the latest driver software for the CDs. Then remove them in Windows Device Manager, re-boot and let Windows rediscover them.
If that doesn't work I would take the box back to the guy you paid to fix it. :)
After all he knows what he did.............we can only guess?
Good luck
thanx i apprciate all your help. I also have one other question. He did a bios update on my computer. i was on AO2 and now it is at A06 and im having some trouble with my plug and play like with my webcam its USB and i plug it in and it wont "see" it. im thinking when he did the bios update it messed up my plug and play.
Hi Tex,
I obviously don't know if the BIOS update went smoothly, but I have encountered similar problems, and they can usually be resolved by updating the drivers and possibly deleting/re-installing the hardware.
With USB devices take a look in the setup and see if there are any options for USB, you may have to enable them.
Cheers
ok thanx again for the help.
Did you open the machine and make sure the cables are all plugged in first?
muerto- yes i did, i suspected that at first.... maybe he reversed the jumpers on the cd drives i dont know...
Tex,
If the jumpers were wrong I would expect problems on boot up rather than the intermittent "dissapearance" that you are getting mind you, I am not sure what would happen if you had one as "master" and the other as "cable select"
The problem does sound like a software one to me.
how would i go about deleting and re installing the drivers for my USB ports and CD drives?
Arrrrgh! don't delete the drivers, those are the Windows XP default drivers, you want to keep them.
The problem is that older devices may not work properly with the WinXP default drivers. In which case you need a driver from the manufacturer which supports running their device in an XP environment.
Now, your equipment used to work, until your HDD failed. When you had the Windows XP reloaded, you lost those drivers that were not part of the standard XP suite. What I am suggesting is that where you have problems with peripheral devices you go to the manufacturers' sites and look for Win XP drivers. If you find that they have Win98, WinME and Win2000 but nothing for XP, I would suggest that you get the Win2000 one (DO NOT USE 98/ME drivers). Once you have obtained the drivers and loaded them, you can install the hardware device via the "add hardware" option in the control panel (it is already physically installed) In some circumstances you may need to remove the hardware (in the Windows control panel) and let Windows re-detect it, and you might have to manually point Windows to the drivers you want to use, otherwise it will use its default drivers. You should find full instructions on the manufacturers' sites...........it might help to print those out first.
Obviously, if you do not have a problem with a device, leave it alone.
With USB, the problem is usually with the device, NOT the hub, so leave the hub alone. Just delete the camera/scanner/modem or whatever in the Windows Device Manager bit of control panel. Make sure that the device IS NOT attached to the machine and run the installation program.........it should prompt you to attach the device at the appropriate time.
If you have the USB device already attached, it probably won't install properly.
Normally XP is very good with plug and play devices, and modern stuff like CD/DVD readers, hard drives and so on.
More sophisticated items like cameras, scanners, printers, CD/DVD burners and possibly modems may want to load additional software of their own. So you need to run their installation program, to get it to work properly.
The problem here would be if the installation software on your CD/floppies does not support XP. Then you will need to go to the manufacturer's site and get the XP version of the INSTALLATION PROGRAM.
The only thing you might need to do with the USB hub is boot into setup (BIOS) and check that USB is enabled. You might also look in Device Manager and see if Windows XP recognises your USB.
You said you have A06................I am guessing that is Award BIOS? I think that I have the same on this one so I will check it out.
If you are still having problems, can you give me the exact make and model of the devices concerned, so that I can do some research and give you more detailed and precise instructions.
Cheers
nilhil i really appreciate all your help thanx alot. well i have updated my USB drivers so now they are working fine but i am still having the problem of my CD drives randomly appearing and disappearing... I checked my jumper settings one more time and i know that they are connected as my CD-ROM as the master and my CD burner as the slave, that seems ok but, now they are connected to the motherboard by one cable instead of two ( he must have got rid of one cable) is that a problem?? and also now when i boot up it doesnt recognize my harddrives but, i press F1 to continue and it works fine from there ( apart from me not being able to see my removalble storage drives!) thanx for ur patience i hope i dont seem like to much of an idiot. bye.
I got stuck up with similar problem over my xp-pro, but i didn't went for any updates, i had to re-install xp to make that up,
i didn't add new device or install new software, it just don't dissplay my drives icon in explorer form.
how could it happen?
I suspect a driver problem as well, I would do what nihil said, uninstall the drivers for the cd drive and burner, and reinstall them, hopefully you kept the driver cd's...
another problem I suspect is a faulty motherboard, maybe the EIDE interfaces, who knows what that technician did to your motherboard, I have droped a screw driver on my motherboards before and nothing happens, other times all kinds of weird stuff happens...
is it possible that some one could have blocked access to drives ? if yes HOW ?
imagine i m administrator how could i can block my cd(R-RW) drives so that either they become invisible or stop working.?
im the admin on the computer, as far as i know the drives arent blocked.... i think the drives are mislabelled though so im gonna change the drive letters and see if that helps
It is possible to block access or block drives , we got 2k&xp in our institute and our proffessor had done this so that we can not fingure our systems with any extra material.
but not know how to this.
that could be texan lokeshdb_ms want to ask?
if u know this add me into ur's fans list.
c_sniper / lokeshdb_ms > any reason you're using two accounts that talk to each other and try to explain each other's posts? Shoot me a PM to decide what account you want to keep...
haha, that's funny as hell!! haha!!