Missing DVD and CD-R Drives

[TylerB]

Can anyone please help? After installing a new floppy disk
drive windows suddenly stopped detecting my DVD and CD
drives! I've tried the solutions suggested in Knowledge
base Article 320553 and am now getting a problem in the
device manager saying there's a problem the 'PCI Simple
Communications Controller'.
What on earth does this mean? At my wits end because I
can't use anything from a CD and I don't have an ISP
installed either!
Thanks

 

[Michael Pardee]

I'm guessing you have a hardware problem. It is easy to
get a connector on the CD/DVD cables out of whack when
futzing with the floppy drive.

The authority on hardware good/bad for the drives is the
BIOS. Boot to the CMOS setup and see if the drives detect
OK. If not, check the data nad power connections to the
drives. You may have to try each drive individually (with
the jumper on the back set to master, and using the end
connector on the data cable.) One bad drive can kill them
both.

Once they detect in CMOS okay, move on to Windows.

Mike