CD-Rom drive does not work

[Janice]

My gateway computer is 6 years old. It came with a CD-DVD drive, HL-DT-ST
dvdram gma-4020B. It has worked perfectly till today. In device manager it
has a yelllow exclamation point. I tried to update the driver and i get the
message Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but
cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41). Any ideas how to fix this.
Thanks

 

[Bob Knowlden]

One idea:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

Its title: You can no longer access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you
receive an error message after you remove a CD recording program or a DVD
recording program in Windows XP: "error code 31"

The body of the article lists Code 41 as one of the errors that this problem
can produce. There are ways, I think, of getting the error without having
explicitly uninstalled CD writing software.

The fix is not difficult to apply, but it requires deleting two keys from
the Windows Registry.

 

[Don Phillipson]

My gateway computer is 6 years old. It came with a CD-DVD drive, HL-DT-ST
dvdram gma-4020B. It has worked perfectly till today. In device manager it
has a yelllow exclamation point. I tried to update the driver and i get the
message Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but
cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41). Any ideas how to fix this.

Consider: laser drives wear out (no drive lasts for ever) and
DVD drives include two laser units. The simplest test is to
instal the old drive in a different machine, and see whether
it is detected OK and the drivers installed. Record in writing
jumper settings and cable connections so you can reproduce
them correctly if you instal a new DVD drive yourself. (This
is a simple task.)

 

[Peter Foldes]

Don

Code 41 is a simple reg fix. See the MS KB that Don Philipson posted. No need to
change drives. Even if you change to a new drive the same issue will remain until
fixed

 

[M.I.5¾]

Consider: laser drives wear out (no drive lasts for ever) and
DVD drives include two laser units. The simplest test is to
instal the old drive in a different machine, and see whether
it is detected OK and the drivers installed. Record in writing
jumper settings and cable connections so you can reproduce
them correctly if you instal a new DVD drive yourself. (This
is a simple task.)

Whilst true, a laser failure cannot give the symptoms the OP describes.
When the laser fails, the drive just won't write (and often read) discs
anymore. It still appears correctly in Device Manager because XP has no way
of knowing the status of the lasers. There is a possibility that the drive
electronics has failed, but most problems of this type can usually be cured
by following the link provided by Bob.

 

[Janice]

Thank you Bob. That fixed my problem.