I turned on my computer a few days ago and my computer now refuses to acknowledge that I have a CD-ROM installed. This happened after I moved to a new apartment, I thought it was possible that something was physically damaged, but when I push the open button, the tray slides out and the access button lights up. Oh, I also installed an ethernet card (that seems to be working fine) right before I moved.
In the system window, under device managers, it says there is a problem with my hard disk controller. I tried loading a new one, but the one windows 98 pointed me towards changed nothing.
I know that the problem is probably to complicated or obscure to diagnose with such a vague description, but if the problem sounds familiar to anyone, I’d appreciate the help. (Oh, and by the way, I actually did take the time to search the SD archives for similar queries, and found none…last time I asked a Q I was scolded for not doing so)
Thanks in advance.
there’s a chance you might have a virus. sometimes they throw windows into MS-DOS compatibility mode, killing the bus mastering on your hard drives and making your CDROM disappear. check for that by dropping to a DOS prompt and typing CHKDSK. look for the line that says “total bytes memory,” it should be 655,360. if it’s lower, there’s probably a memory-resident virus mucking things up and you’ll need to clean it out with anti-virus software. this isn’t 100% sure to detect viruses, but it’s a good quick way, and i don’t think a virus is your problem anyway.
most likely it’s that ethernet card you installed making a fuss with the hard drive’s IRQs. you can check that by going back to the device manager and double clicking on the first icon in the list, computer. it’ll give you an IRQ list- see what is sharing IRQs with what. if the IDE controllers and the network card are sharing IRQs, that’s probably what’s causing you grief. usually the IDE controllers will be on IRQs 14 and 15, two each. they don’t like to share- you’ll notice a lot of other things do share and don’t care.
if this is the case, check and see if you have any free IRQs- numbers not appearing in that list. if you don’t, you might just have too many devices in your system. if you have one free, or there isn’t too much on IRQ 5 or 9, try removing the network card from the device manager, then physically removing it from your system and rebooting. see if your CDrom comes back.
then try and reinstall your network card and hope it chooses a different IRQ. if you’re full up, it might just not work at all. one good way to free up IRQs is to disable your serial (com) ports, you’re probably not using them anyway, and most PCs have two of them. you can disbale them from the device manager, reboot, and try to reinstall that network card and see if it chooses a different IRQ.
that’s all off the top of my head- if that’s a no go, you’ll probably want to call tech support and get a walk through.
Between moving and recently installing something you may have just nudged connection loose. While your power may be on your ribbon connection the data flow may be dislodged.
Doubt it. It’s likely the IDE ribbon just came loose. He said he installed the Ethernet card before he moves, but the CDROM disapeared after he moved. If it were an IRQ conflict, the CDROM would have disapeared immediately.
If it were a virus, the symtoms would have probably manifested themselves in other ways by now.
I sometimes take my pc over to a friends house where a bunch of us meet and paly various games (sad, I know, but amusing)
I have to carry the whole lot on my bike so things come in for a certain amount of durability testing.
The ‘loss’ of my cd-rom has happened a couple of times, turned out the cable had loosened and for some reason windows then disables the IDE channel it’s on.
Have a look in control panel ,then ‘system’ and click on the ‘device manager’ tab.
Look under ‘Hard disk controllers’ , you should see something like xxxbus master IDE controller and certainly there will be ‘Primary IDE dual fifo’ and ‘Secondary IDE dual fifo’
Click on those and see if they are enabled, there is a checkbox somewhere near the bottom of the dialogue box.