Can't find hard drives for 5 minutes

[Stu]

I was recently trying to get an HP CD-Writer correctly
installed. While working on this I messed something up.
For 5 to 10 minutes after booting, none of my aps can
access the hard drives (there are 2, about 60 GB total).
After 5 minutes or so, they become visible and everything
works normally.

If I launch Windows Explorer during this 5 minute period,
and click "My Computer", I get a flashlight and folder
icon in which the flashlight moves back and forth. Not
sure what that means. After 5 minutes or so, if Windows
Explorer is running, the drives will pop onto the right
hand side as expected. Why the long wait?

Any ideas?

 

[Peter]

Hi,

What things you have messed up?
Make sure you are using the 40pin 80conductor flat ribbon
cable for your harddisks.
Also check for any losen connection for all the internal
devices, including those PCI/AGP devices, ram chips, etc.

Peter

 

[Stu]

Thanks for your reply. I'm confident that I only messed
up something in software, as I had all this working fine
prior to messing with the driver install on my CD-Writer.
I did go so far as to remove the CD-Writer driver, all
related software and I disconnected the CD-Writer cable.
None of this helped the issue I've described. The
symptoms showed up before I touched anything inside the
cabinet. I had the CD-Writer working okay before all of
this occured. The only thing I was trying to fix was that
I got a prompt at boot to insert the CD-Writer install
CD. I got tired of having to cancel that prompt (because
the CD-Writer was working fine), so I reinstalled the CD-
Writer driver. That's when the symptoms showed up. I'm
pretty sure I messed something up on the software side.

Thanks,
Stu

 

[Dave R.]

I paid Microsoft $35 and a wait of 50 minutes to have a techie ask me if I
have a scanner, which I do. He said to unplug it, turn off the computer
replug the scanner and restart. After restarting "My Computer " came right
up, showing all the drives, and has worked since. This fix has worked for
some not others.
Hope it works for you.
Dave