Windows 2000 won't recognize my CD drives. I don't like this. Help.

Factual Questions
1

Long story short, Windows 2000 will no longer recognize either my Toshiba DVD-ROM drive (IDE device) or my Teac 8x24 CD-ROM drive (SCSI device attached to an Adaptec PCI SCSI card).

This is only on Windows 2000 as the drives are recognized and work fine on Windows 98 SE (I have a dual boot), so it’s probably not a hardware problem.

In the system manger (in Win2K), both devices show an error 31, and says that it can’t find the drivers for the devices. Which is bull, since IDE devices should be autodetected and usually don’t need drivers. Nor did I need them for my CDR when I installed it.

This error happened out of the blue some time in the last week or so (I don’t use these drives that much, and no other problems manifest, so I’m not exactly sure when it happened) and I can’t think of having installed anything other than (maybe) printer drivers in this time period, and uninstalling these doesn’t make any appreciable difference in anything.

A quick google search shows a conflict between Adaptec CDR software and Windows Media Player 7 that recreates these same problems, but this doesn’t help me too much because a) I don’t have WMP 7 installed and b) I apparently don’t have EZ CD creator installed any more. I say apparently because I did have it installed, but can no longer find it anywhere on my system, including the ‘remove program’ list. I don’t remember uninstalling it, but it’s gone all the same.

Come to think of it, I also recently installed Windows 2K service pack 2. This really doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would fubar my system, though.

So…any suggestions?

2

This probably won’t help much, but from my experience, it is almost always WMP in these cases. Do you have any version installed?

3

try this…not sure if it’ll help…but most comp. problems seem to get fixed by trial and error :slight_smile:

so…go to device(system) manager…go to the entries that are showing errors…click on them and choose remove…then choose refresh…it’ll start re-installing these devices…say have disk and specify a location for the drivers…preferably from the original Win2k install disk.

also WinME auto installs WMP so maybe Win2k does the same…not sure…check in start/programs/accessories/entertainment and see what version of media player you have installed…

4

Yes, I do have WMP installed, version 6.4.09.1109. I dunno if this is the problem since things just started happening…

And I would try the “have disk” thing (wonder why I didn’t think of it earlier), except that my Win2K installer is on CD… :frowning:

I did try removing and reinstalling the devices a few times already, and none of those worked.

Say, does anybody know about aspi drivers and whether that could be the problem?

5

Did you try uninstalling your version of WMP?

6

I was thinking about it, but couldn’t find any true uninstall feature as it came w/ windows. I could delete the file that is the actual player (mplayer2.exe), though I doubt that this would do the same thing as a true uninstall.

Thank god I can use my Win98 install to play games…

7

Boot into 89 and copy the Win2k CAB files into a folder on your hard drive. Then you can do the “have disk thing.”

8

Errr, boot into 98. Then Copy over the files, then boot into 2k, then reinstall the drivers. Specify the folder you copied the cabs into when it asks for the disk.

9

“. Which is bull, since IDE devices should be autodetected and usually don’t
need drivers.”

Yeah, thats why they come with software on floppy. WHy not try install that? did youlook at the manual to see about issues with your operating system?