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Missing optical drives on older computer

Discussion in 'DVD / Blu-ray drives' started by diggum, Apr 29, 2011.

  1. diggum

    diggum Member

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    Hi everyone. My cuz is having a problem with an older box (pre 2005 I would think), xp x86 os. The cd and dvd drives have mysteriously decided they don't work anymore. They spin the discs alright and open/close fine. They just don't play/burn anything. In the device manager, they have those yellow ! by their listings (and strangely enough, the cd drive is now listed as a dvd drive for no good reason). I tried uninstalling them and adding hardware. They were found but it said there may be a problem.

    SO: Having had this problem myself many years ago, I tried the fix that worked for me. THe jumpers on the drives were set to Master, and the other to cable select. I had her switch them both to CS and uninstal/reinstall the devices again. No luck.

    The computer has 0 restore points (sigh) and if the drives ever had installation disks, they are long gone.

    Can anyone offer a possible solution? Need more info? I am not the most clever thing in the world. What I know about these boxes is mostly from having had to fix so many I've screwed up myself so I'm frankly out of ideas.

    Thanks for reading my post and considering my request!
     
  2. attar

    attar Senior member

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    In Device Manager, select the IDE Controllers and expand them to show the Primary And Secondary Channels.
    Assuming the opticals are on the Secondary, right click and 'uninstall' then reboot.
     
  3. PACO_1

    PACO_1 Member

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    Assuming they are both on the same ide cable; Try it with only one drive connected to the first plug on the cable and set that drives jumper to master. Power up and see how it schows in device mgr. Now shut down Than connect the second drive to the 2nd plug and set that drives jumper to SLAVE not CS, now with both drives connected power up and see if that worked. That has worked for me everytime.
     
  4. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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  5. PACO_1

    PACO_1 Member

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    Sorry about the sig
     
  6. diggum

    diggum Member

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    We actually did find the microsoft link you offered and it did fix the problem. So much for exhausting all the easy options first XD.

    Thank you so much for taking the time to respond everyone!
     
  7. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    no problem, teach & learn.
     

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