CDRom drive not available unless booted up with disk

[Calvin]

Hi,

Have noticed this occuring a couple of times at one of our
sites on different computers.

The computers it is affecting are IBM 300 GLs all running
Windows 2000. They are server connected across a network.

What happens is that the CDRom drives are not available to
the users unless they insert the CD disk into the drive
and then reboot the machines. If they reboot then they
can see the CD drive in windows explorer as long as they
rebooted with the disk in the drive.

If they rebooted without the disk in the drive then the CD
drive is not present in windows explorer and if they then
put the disk into the drive it is not shown. They cannot
access it.

At first I thought this was a hardware fault, but I have
seen it occur on a number of these computers now.

Is it a hardware fault or is it something else?

Thanks in advance

Calvin

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi,

Have noticed this occuring a couple of times at one of our
sites on different computers.

The computers it is affecting are IBM 300 GLs all running
Windows 2000. They are server connected across a network.

What happens is that the CDRom drives are not available to
the users unless they insert the CD disk into the drive
and then reboot the machines. If they reboot then they
can see the CD drive in windows explorer as long as they
rebooted with the disk in the drive.

If they rebooted without the disk in the drive then the CD
drive is not present in windows explorer and if they then
put the disk into the drive it is not shown. They cannot
access it.

At first I thought this was a hardware fault, but I have
seen it occur on a number of these computers now.

Is it a hardware fault or is it something else?

Thanks in advance

Calvin

Many PCs show a table of available disks & CD drives at boot
time. The table is generated by the BIOS. When you press the
Pause key then you can study this table at your leisure.

Do your PCs show a CD drive at this stage?