This is, at this point, hypothetical as I am still reviewing my various options.
The short of it is that both my CD drives, a DVD Player and a CD-RW have both disappeared from my system. Windoze no longer knows that they exist. It doesn’t see then as new hardware when I reboot. Besides, the CD-RW is broken – the door on the front of it is broken off. The DVD player has never played a DVD without freezing up the computer. :rolleyes:
My thoughts are to replace them both. One with a plain CD-ROM and the other with a new CD-RW.
Now for the technical question. If I install new CD-ROM drives into my computer, how will I get the software for them installed? Or will Windoze automatically pick up the CD in one of the drives? The answer to this is probably so extremely simple as to be funny, but what I know about repairing computers could easily be put on the top of a pin.
Incidentally, it is a Compaq computer (yeah, I know) with a 60 gig HD, 256 megs of memory and Windows ME.
Assuming all else is working normally the computer should recognize the new cd drive (RW) and automatically install workable drivers automatically so that you can use the drive to install the software/drivers that come with it. That’s how it works for the few I’ve dealt with anyway.
Unless you’re making direct CD copies, it might be a better idea to skip the CD-ROM and just get the CD-RW, since a CD-RW can do everything that a CD-ROM can.
I might point out that if you get a plain CD-ROM and a CD-RW that you won’t be able to play DVDs any more. Maybe get a plain CD-ROM and a DVD/CD-RW combo drive?
What operating system are you running? I’ve seen a few computers with Win98 “forget” that there were CD drives installed. Sometimes mucking with the BIOS settings helped, other times changing the IDE channel or port they were on helped, and sometimes nothing did the trick short of putting a new drive in. Haven’t dealt with WinME very much.
If your computer can’t recognise your CD-ROM drive, can you install it manually? If not, there’s a serious problem with it, and replacing the drive won’t do the job.
I’d say that if both your CD-rom drives went unlisted in short order, I’d guess it’s probably not the CD-drives at all. Before you go buying more of what you don’t know you need, find another computer and first try switching device cables, and then try switching your non-working CD-rom drives with the other computer’s. They don’t need any drivers to do basic CD-reading at all, so it’s not difficult or time consuming. (…-I would bet that all your drives will work in another computer, and any drives from another computer won’t work in yours…)
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