Topic: Lost drivers for 2 Optical units

[foxman318]

System runs fine in the morning.  Boot up in the evening and I find that my 2 optical units don't work:
NEC DVD_RW ND-1300A (drive e)
SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-348B (drive f)

I check Device Manager and find a exclamation mark against each unit. I check the properties of both units. Both say the following:
Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

I do an automatic find/install hoping XP will find the drivers, it doesn't. Both units show in the BIOS. None visible in windows explorer. I now have a "Removable Drive G" in there place. Don't know where that came from.  Even tried XP to restore to a point when the system was working.  No joy there.

Anyone any ideas...........otherwise its reformat of drive C and re-install of XP.

foxman

[Sandra]

Hi Foxman and

I had a similar problem a few weeks back when exchanging a dvd rom for a dvd writer  
Sometimes it was there and sometimes not. Have you go the bios set to auto detect for master and slave on both ide channels ?
It seemed to be something to do with the PI0 mode settings, after setting the cd writer and the dvd writer to 0 it found both and indentified them correctly ever since.
Not sure if thats the same as your problem but I know it was frustrating as I had swapped ide leads and jumper settings, had each as master and slave alternately  

[foxman318]

Hi Sandra
Nice to meet u.
Looked at the BIOS........set to auto, both are showing "FPIO4 / DMA2", can't changed that when it is set to auto.
I have been loading up a few progs from the net & then uninstalling them. The only hint I might of had this morning was when Internet Download Manager (IDM) suggested that some  downloades may have been a bit "flakey" as it puts it. I also run spybot and ad-aware.

regrads.......foxman

[Sandra]

I would try disconnecting both drives and restarting, then shut down and connect the drives again and see if it picks them up properly. Other than that I cant think of much else to suggest, as I said I was at my wits end with the one I did a bit back, it would see the new drive whether as a slave or as master most of the time but not the original one, then after messing in the bios they both came on  

[foxman318]

will give it a try and let u know


fox

[foxman318]

Nope ......didn't work either.
Tried a system restore back several days to when I re-installed XP and it won't do it.
Very strange............looks like another XP re-install coming on.  If I remember correctly, there are no drivers as such that came with the units. XP detects the units and runs them.  Thats why I find it strange when device manager tells me that the drivers are either missing or corrupt.......

Fox.............

[Sandra]

I still think its something in the PIO mode, maybe if you set them as user define then you can set them as 0, then that may work  

[foxman318]

I uninstalled the 2 units in Device Manager and rebooted. XP booted up and showed new hardware found (NEC & SAMSUNG CD roms) when I went to Device manager, they were back again with the exclamation marks!!!

I will look at the BIOS again and if I can't sought it from there....then its going to be an XP restore......... >
Thats the only problem with having restore disks and not proper xp operating system diks, it only returns the PC to factory settings. u can't run the disk to fix lost and corrupt files........

 >

Fox

[Sandra]

If its found them and identified them correctly but has the yellow ! then it has to be the PIO mode surely  

Does the sfc /scannow command in start/run not work with just the restore disk or allow a reinstall over the top of itself