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Explorer does not recognize optical drives. I have a Win 98 SE system.
I am unable to access d: or e: drive (Optical drives). Both have been installed for some time, both have LED indicator lighting that appears normal and both loading trays open and shut normally. No recent hardware or software changes.
System will still recognize A drive (floppy) C drive (HD) and USB thumb drive if installed.
Noticed that device manager only list floppy, HD and USB thumb drive.
Noticed that device manager for the Hard Disc controller lists the yellow exclamation point caution ! for Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
Have tried rebooting and run regclean.
Went to BIO setup: Set up to auto detect/no indication of cd in BIOS.
No other symptoms noticed.
Is this a hardware problem or a software glitch?
Can anyone provide troubleshooting suggestions?
thanks in advance
Open device manager and delete both hard disc controllers. Then reboot and let Windows redetect the hardware.
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In cmos/bios setup, make sure both primary and secondary IDE controllers are enabled.
It sounds like it might be a hardware problem but windows will sometimes develop a problem with the secondary controller and send the cdrom into msdos compatibility mode. Right click on 'my computer' then PROPERTIES--PERFORMANCE. It'll tell you there if that's the problem. If the cdrom doesn't show there as being in msdos compatiblilty mode then it's probably a hardware problem.
If it does show up there, try restoring a previous registry. Windows only keeps track of the registries from the last 5 days of usage so if it's been longer than that it probably won't help.
Anyway, power up the computer. Before the OS starts to load start tapping F8. A menu should come up. Choose 'command prompt only'. At the c:\> prompt type scanreg/restore and enter. Then choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes the problem (if one exists). When it's done, reboot and see if your cdrom is showing.
If it's still not working, delete the primary, secondary and the master hard drive controllers in device manager. Shutdown and reboot. Windows will refind the controllers and set them up again, hopefully without the yellow exclaimation mark.
If that doesn't work, run regedit and do a search for noide. Delete any references you find.
If that doesn't work, reinstall the chipset drivers.
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Follow-up (for future reference, in case this happens to someone else):
It turned out that one of the drives had failed. Found it by disconnecting ribbon cable - one device at a time. After disconnecting the failed drive, the other showed up normally on reboot. What is interesting is that one failed drive affected both drives making it look like either a software problem or common hardware problem (ribbon cable or mother board).
I was able to troubleshoot this after reading the responses given above. Hope this info helps someone.
Thanks to all
tom
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Hi
I have a slightly different problem although closely related.My pc has two optical drives installed, both of which were working perfectly well for a long time until some days ago.
Now... neither are being detected by explorer. They do both show up on Device Manager, but each with the yellow exclamation mark beside them.
When clicking on Properties for either drive... Device status reads
"Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)
Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device."
I am not tech savvy at all... but please could someone tell me how to resolve the problem. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling both, but I keep getting prompted to insert the disc that came with the drive... so to re-install the drivers, but as neither drive is reading anything... well, it's self explanatory.
I've even tried downloading the driver for my Plextor DVDR 760A... but each time i double click... i get
No Drive Found :(BTW... if it helps... the other drive is a Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616t
Identical symptoms.
PLEASE HELP!
I'm at a total loss
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Look back in Device manager for IDE/ ATA/ATAPI controllers.
Expand that listing. There should be 3 lines listed. Primary, Secondary, and Dual. If any have the yellow Exclamation mark, remove the entire listing and reboot. You MAY need to provide the CD for the MBOard.
If that isn't the issue watch the POST screens at startup to see if ALL of your drives are listed by model.
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Hi! thanks for the response :)
I followed your advice and checked on Device Manager, at the IDE/ ATA/ ATAPI controllers. There are no yellow exclamation marks by any...
However.. it does now seem that neither of my optical drives are showing up at all on Device Manager! No sign at all that either exist... even on Booting up They are listed as being absent.What should i do? It just seems to get worse each day... i can't even reinstall Windows as there's nothing to read the CD.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Have you installed or removed any burner software or any scanners or scanner software lately?
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Yes!
I removed Roxio Easy Media Creator 9 and Norton Internet Security in the last couple of days.
I removed Roxio EMC9 because since i had installed it, my Plextor ceased to read audio cds whilst DVD reading capabilities were fine. And after reading up on some forums about how many peoples optical drives were malfuncioning after installing EMC9.Norton was removed because i could not reinstall Windows XP as some file named GoBack was preventing the process and apparently it is within Norton.
I had no idea uninstalling a software could be so damaging.
:(
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This may be a problem with your ASPI layer drivers. To get more information about this topic look at the link below.
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