Weird problems with CD-RW and DVD/RW "disappearing" HELP!!!! (Long and probably boring...)

[Stephen Porter]

Hi,

I really don't know exactly where to start, but this problem has me
baffled. Looks like it's probably time to back up and just reinstall
everything, but maybe someone here has a better suggestion.

I have a 3-4 year-old home-built machine with a SOYO Dragon MB and
Athlon processor running Win2K Pro. Has always been a very stable
and good machine until recently....

First sign of trouble was that my old SanDisk Compact Flash card
reader, which had always had a problem with periodically disappearing
and requiring to be reinstalled, finally disappeared and then would
NOT reinstall. Install dialogs required a "UPATC.SYS" located in
the drivers folder, which always worked before. Suddenly the
install started failing with a message saying that there was a
process or a name service (???) with the same name installed already
and it wouldn't work. Also, if I tried to plug in the reader's USB
plug, it crashed the machine HARD--blue screen.

I tried calling SanDisk but got no callback...not surprising on a $20
3-year old product. So I thought I would just go to Fry's
(California computer emporium extraordinaire) and get another reader.
No joy...this new reader ALSO wouldn't install and attempts to hook
up the device would crash the system again. No problem, just go to
Fry's and get a "better" reader--"6-in-One", super-duper, combo
reader. Same problem. It's starting to dawn on me that it's not
the readers--something on the Win2K system has gotten boggled up
badly. OK--no biggie, I'll get along fine until I figure it out or
get time to reinstall everything fresh, or move to XP Pro or
something.

Then I replaced one of my dual CD-RW's that was getting sticky with a
new Pioneer DVD-/+RW drive. IT had some problems installing with
strange error messages and crashes...so I returned that for another
drive that seemed to install OK and work fine.

Until tonight, when I discovered that both my new DVD-RW and old CD-
RW drives are not being recognized by Windows Explorer, or Powerdesk
or anything else--everytime you put a CD in and try to read it, a
"Please insert a disc in drive "D:" (or "F:"). Comes up. So I
can't see or run anything from EITHER drive anymore.

More weirdly, I can still BURN data (using Nero Express) to either
drive, and the data IS there--I can access it on other machines.
But the machine that burned them can't see them.

One other possible clue is that the drive letters seem to have all
gotten screwed up too. These two drives always used to be "D" and
"F". "E" was the old compact flash disk when it worked. "G" was
sometimes there as an iPOD connected via USB 2.0. And "I" was an
new network attached SCSI disk from Ximeta that I may be making good
use of to create backups very soon!

Now the DVD and CD drives are still "D" and "F" but there is no "E".
Then the Ximeta NDAS is "K". I'm starting to think that somehow
Win2K has scrambled its inner brains and has somehow gotten all those
attempts to attach compact flash readers and assigned them phantom
drive letters or something.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to unscramble this mess, or should
I just bite the bullet and redo the whole system?

And..if I decide to do that, can I be sure that I'll even be able to
get a CD to work!!! I guess if I just backup and reformat and start
to install an OS, they will "come back"????

Any guidance or help much appreciated.

Best regards,

 

[TheLastMan]

You need to run a re-install of Windows 2000 which
reconfigures the "HAL" (Hardware Extraction Layer). This
will also uninstall all service packs and "Windows Update"
updates - which is a bore, but usually straightforward and
less frustrating than trying to sort out the particular
problem. Not sure if there is a procedure to do this
while keeping your settings and data. I know how to do
this in XP, but not Win2K.

Maybe someone else can help?

 

[Guest]

Found it!

To make this run you need to set your BIOS to boot from
the CD-ROM drive.

Turn off the computer.
Insert your Windows CD in the CD-ROM drive or the DVD-ROM
drive, and start the computer from the CD.

When you are prompted
"To set up Windows 2000 now, press ENTER"
press ENTER.

Setup looks for any installations of Windows 2000 on the
hard disk and then displays a list of installations that
it finds.

Use the arrow keys to select the installation that you
want to repair, and then press R to select the
"To repair the selected Windows 2000 installation, press
R" option.

This will start the repair of your previous Windows 2000
installation.

When it finishes install the latest Service Pack then go
to Windows Update and re-do all of those as well (yawn).
This should fix the kind of mix-up you have ended up with.

 

[EdK]

Hi,

I really don't know exactly where to start, but this problem has me
baffled. Looks like it's probably time to back up and just reinstall
everything, but maybe someone here has a better suggestion.

I have a 3-4 year-old home-built machine with a SOYO Dragon MB and
Athlon processor running Win2K Pro. Has always been a very stable
and good machine until recently....

First sign of trouble was that my old SanDisk Compact Flash card
reader, which had always had a problem with periodically disappearing
and requiring to be reinstalled, finally disappeared and then would
NOT reinstall. Install dialogs required a "UPATC.SYS" located in
the drivers folder, which always worked before. Suddenly the
install started failing with a message saying that there was a
process or a name service (???) with the same name installed already
and it wouldn't work. Also, if I tried to plug in the reader's USB
plug, it crashed the machine HARD--blue screen.

I tried calling SanDisk but got no callback...not surprising on a $20
3-year old product. So I thought I would just go to Fry's
(California computer emporium extraordinaire) and get another reader.
No joy...this new reader ALSO wouldn't install and attempts to hook
up the device would crash the system again. No problem, just go to
Fry's and get a "better" reader--"6-in-One", super-duper, combo
reader. Same problem. It's starting to dawn on me that it's not
the readers--something on the Win2K system has gotten boggled up
badly. OK--no biggie, I'll get along fine until I figure it out or
get time to reinstall everything fresh, or move to XP Pro or
something.

Then I replaced one of my dual CD-RW's that was getting sticky with a
new Pioneer DVD-/+RW drive. IT had some problems installing with
strange error messages and crashes...so I returned that for another
drive that seemed to install OK and work fine.

Until tonight, when I discovered that both my new DVD-RW and old CD-
RW drives are not being recognized by Windows Explorer, or Powerdesk
or anything else--everytime you put a CD in and try to read it, a
"Please insert a disc in drive "D:" (or "F:"). Comes up. So I
can't see or run anything from EITHER drive anymore.

More weirdly, I can still BURN data (using Nero Express) to either
drive, and the data IS there--I can access it on other machines.
But the machine that burned them can't see them.

One other possible clue is that the drive letters seem to have all
gotten screwed up too. These two drives always used to be "D" and
"F". "E" was the old compact flash disk when it worked. "G" was
sometimes there as an iPOD connected via USB 2.0. And "I" was an
new network attached SCSI disk from Ximeta that I may be making good
use of to create backups very soon!

Now the DVD and CD drives are still "D" and "F" but there is no "E".
Then the Ximeta NDAS is "K". I'm starting to think that somehow
Win2K has scrambled its inner brains and has somehow gotten all those
attempts to attach compact flash readers and assigned them phantom
drive letters or something.

Does anyone have any ideas of how to unscramble this mess, or should
I just bite the bullet and redo the whole system?

And..if I decide to do that, can I be sure that I'll even be able to
get a CD to work!!! I guess if I just backup and reformat and start
to install an OS, they will "come back"????

Any guidance or help much appreciated.

Best regards,

***********
Before you reinstall, try going into Add/Remove hardware wizard, want to
eject, check the box to show all, or hidden , you will probably see devices
that are no longer physically attached....remove all references to whats not
there and see if you can reinstall.sometimes you have to give W2K an
enema........good luck
EdK