CD drive probs

[Guest]

Hi

Using windows XP sp2
Have a cd drive, dvd drive and floppy drive

I cannot read or write to any of them. They are working because I can hear
them running and the lights come on. Also have gone into device manager and
checked "properties" on all three which shows that they are working and the
drivers are installed. Have even reinstalled the windows drivers for all
three. Bios shows that they are there and when I go into explorer, it shows
that the drives (A,E,and F) are also there.

If I put a disc into the cd drive it does not reead it. Click on the E
drive in explorer and nothing happens. Go into "my computer" > "properties"
and it shows that the disc is empty, which it isn't. Same for the DVD drive.

The Floppy drive, cannot even format that. I am told that the disc is
unformattable.
also "my computer" > "properties" on A: drive shows disc is empty which it
isn't.

I have checked for any virus's etc. and also looked at the "how to
troubleshoot cd-rom drive probs " on the Microsoft site which didn't help. I
have also used the Autofix.exe programme and a programme called XP CD-dvd_fix
but no go.

I might have thought that it was the actual drive itself if it had only been
one of them but it is all three. Am I missing a piece of software somewhere.

Don't know what I could have done to create this.

Can anyone help please.

Regards

 

[Orion]

I have seen this problem a long time back ... forgot the cause... one
suggestion is to go into device manager right click on the effected drives
and uninstall them then click on the Action menu and Scan for new devices ..
it should find them and reinstall them .. you should probably reboot even if
it doesn't suggest to do so

if you aren't familiar with getting to device manager just click start run
and past in this :
%SystemRoot%\system32\compmgmt.msc /s

 

[Guest]

Hi Orion

I.ve tied that, and it didn't work.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Regards

 

[Guest]

Hi

Further to the above,
I re-booted in safe mode with prompt only and was able to use “DOS†to
format my floppy in “A†drive and change the drive prompt to “E†and read the
cd Disk in the drive.

I then closed down and re-booted in normal mode. I then put the same cd
into “E†drive and it eventually came up with the screen showing CD drive E.
But there was nothing showing in it i.e. it did not find anything on the
disc. If I click on “E†drive in Explorer, the drive doesn’t work. No light
comes on to show it is working.

I also clicked on “A†drive for the floppy in explorer and with the same
disc in the drive that I had formatted earlier whilst in DOS, it came up with
a message that the floppy was not formatted did I want to format it. I say
yes and it gets almost to the end of formatting and an another message comes
up that windows was unable to format the floppy.

Given that whilst in “dos†prompt I was able to read the contents of the CD
in “E†drive and format the Floppy in “A†drive and was not able to do either
of these things in Windows normal mode, could this point to a software
problem within windows and if so, how do I overcome it.

Regards