Help me, my CD-RW and CD-ROM are not showing up on my computer, or device manager. After much searching on this site, I think I have found the problem, but now need to know how to fix it. I will try and be as detailed as possible with the information below. PCI IDE Controller seems to be bad. It has a yellow ! next to it, which from the context of some of these strings I see posted, appears to be not good. It should be noted that I DO NOT have the recovery disk that came with the computer. And since the CD-ROM and CD-RW do not work, I can’t use those. When I click onto the device manager I see within some tabs the following: The drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28). To reinstall drivers for this device, click Reinstall Driver It should be noted that it gives me the opportunities to Reinstall drivers under the General Tab and Update Drivers under the Driver Tab and in both cases when I try and do that it tells me “Windows was unable to locate a driver for this device”. How do I reinstall those drivers so the CD ROM and CD-RW will work?? Where can I get these drivers?? I assume, this is my problem??? In an effort to help me, assume I am not very computer literate (which I’m not) so please be detailed and go easy. The units are Sony CRX 100E-DL CD-RW with a ATAPI Interface And Hitachi GD-5000 8X DVD Rom drive Information under the device manager when clicking onto the PCI IDE Controller and each tab is as follows: When I click on this it says the following: Under the General Tab- Device Type: Other Devices Manufacturer: None Specified Hardware Version: 001 The drivers for this device are not installed (Code 28). To reinstall drivers for this device, click Reinstall Driver Under Driver Tab- Provider: (nothing is listed) Date: (nothing is listed) No driver files are required or have been located for this device. To update the driver files for this device, click update driver. Under the Resources Tab- Use automatic settings box is checked Resource Type Settings Input/Output Range 0170-0177 Input/Output Range 0376-0376 Interrupt Request 15 Input/Output Range 1080-108F Conflicts device list: No conflicts Also in the device manager, right under something called “System Timer” I have another Yellow ! this time next to “Unknown Device” Everything is the same under the tab settings for this “unknown device” with the exception of the Resource Tab which has some different Resource Type and Settings than those listed above. For reference sake those are: Resource Type Settings Input/Output Range 0378-037F Interrupt Request 07 Can someone help me please!!!!!

It's IDE drivers it's looking for. Once they're installed and/or configured properly the cdrom devices should show up. Sometimes that can be fixed by restoring a previous registry. Boot up the computer. Before the OS starts to load, start tapping the F8 key. A menu should come up. Choose 'command prompt only'. At the dos prompt type scanreg/restore and enter. Choose a registry to restore with a date that precedes the problem. When it's done, reboot and see if that fixes it. If not, or if there's no registry from before you had the problem, go to Dell's support site for your model and look for the chipset or IDE driver updates. Download and install the listed drivers.

Oh, you're the 'missing apps.inf' guy. Missing .inf files could be causing the problem since they contain the driver information. Let's get apps.inf installed and then see what happens.

yes, DAVEINCAPS, that's me. Help me out with the apps.inf file issue. I tried to download it, or copy and paste it, but it shows up in the INF folder as 62KB of set up information. What do I need to do with this file to place it in the folder so it is actually being used??? Remember go easy, speak slow as I am a computer idiot. One other thing- someone had suggested I go into registry it tells me, "cannot find the file registry or one of its components" could this be an issue and how do i fix that. Boy my computer is messed up. I do appreciate the help!

The command to access the registry is regedit but don't try running that, at least not yet. If the apps.inf file is on the computer already you should be able to drag it from its current location into the windows\inf folder. From 'my computer', open the c: drive, then the windows folder, then the inf folder. Move that box over to the side of your screen. Then open the c: drive again and open whatever folder(s) contain apps.inf. Then drag the file from there to the windows\inf box. If you downloaded apps.inf on another computer and now have it on a floppy disk you can either do it as above by dragging it from the a: drive or you can copy it using dos. To use dos, just open a dos windows, put the floppy disk in and type copy a:\apps.inf c:\windows\inf and enter.

The file size of 62K is correct. If it's already showing in the inf folder then it should be OK.

DAVEINCAPS I must be doing something wrong. I am getting the message "cannot move APPS: the source and destination filenames are the same" What did I do wrong?? Did I have to delete one?? Is there any way to extract it from the file that was on the forum from the gentleman who placed it there yesterday?