Today, my CD-ROM and DVD-ROM (F and G drives) disappeared from the “My Computer” menu. I can’t access them via the run command either. How can I get these back, if I can?
Anyone?
Apparently Windows isn’t recognizing the drives (and therefore isn’t assigning them drive letters); this could be due to a misconfigured or corrupted driver, a resource conflict, or heaven only knows what else.
You can use the Windows Device Manager to get a handle on the problem. The method of getting there, and using it, varies depending on the version of Windows you’re running. In Windows 2000, you get there by right-clicking on My Computer, selecting Properties, then the Hardware tab, and then clicking on Device Manager; then right-click on one of the drives in question, select Properties, and click on the Troubleshooter button. In Windows 95/98, if I recall correctly, you get to the Device Manager via the Control Panel, and any malfunctioning devices will display a yellow exclamation-point icon. I haven’t used Windows ME or XP, so I don’t know the procedures for those.
Great, thanks, I found the device manager in XP and sure enough, both my CD and DVD roms has exclaimations by them, however, troubleshooting did’t help at all.
When I clicked on the properties of the CD-RW drive it gave the following message:
"Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)
Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device."
The DVD drive gace this message:
"Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)
Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device."
Anyone know what I can do about this? Many thanks!
I had this problem under Win2K and another Doper has had the same problem under XP, and about the only thing we found that worked was to do a full reinstall of the OS. (Even though XP says it ain’t there, it really knows it’s there and can do the reinstall.) I should note that shortly after I did this my CD-R drive (which is what Windoze couldn’t see) died and had to be replaced.
Well, crap.
Btw, this happened when I installed Pinnacle’s Studio AV v.8. Other than this problem, it works perfectly, but there must be another way to correct this without reinstalling the OS…I hope so…
Did you recently uninstall software produced by Roxio, such as EZ CD Recorder? This may damage Windows XP’s CD subsystem. There is an entry in the Microsoft Knowledgebase with more information, but I can’t find the link at the moment.
I did uninstall some software recently, but I don’t think any of it was Roxio…
Jeez - don’t reinstall the OS, just delete the optical drives from Device Manger and have DM try to redetect them! If that fails, dleet them and reboot. Beats having to reinstall XP…
This also happened to me. In the processs of installing Adaptec Easy CD Creator for Windows 95/98/NT, a warning popped up that the software might not work with Windows XP (my current OS), but I chose to ignore it because I needed the software.
BIG MISTAKE. I experienced the same thing as the OP: no icons for either CD drive in the “My Computer” folder and no way to reinstall the drivers. The Device Manager was completely useless. I then tried Rex Fenestrarum’s suggestion, to no avail. I took the computer back to Best Buy, thinking I’d finally get my money’s worth for the ridiculous warranty I had purchased, but after testing my CPU and basically doing everything I had done, they told me I would have to do a complete system restore. Backing up all my data was a chore (it took FOREVER), but after the SR everything worked great. No problems since.
I still don’t know exactly what caused the problem, or why there was no other way to reinstall the drivers.
Yeah, I tired Rex Fenestrarum’s method, but it didn’t work =(
I appreciate everyone’s help…if anyone else has any suggestions, I’m open to try anything.
One other thing you might try is to use System Restore to go to a restore point before today. Start > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore.
Thank you so much! I totally forgot about that Windows XP feature. Anyways, I restored it to an earlier backed up copy (today) and then installed the program that I thought might have caused the problem to begin with…everything works perfectly. I can’t thank everyone who tried to help me with my problem enough. Thanks =)
Sounds like corrupted registry.
“Sounds like corrupted registry.”
Yeah, thats why it comes with Restore 