PC not recognizing CD & DVD drives

**mcquiggd** · 7 October 2006, 13:55

Firstly have you either:

Changed your hardware configuration

Installed something like Daemon Tools etc (software that emulates a CD/DVD player)...

**ChimpMaster** · 7 October 2006, 14:45

Originally posted by mcquiggd

Firstly have you either:

Changed your hardware configuration

Installed something like Daemon Tools etc (software that emulates a CD/DVD player)...

Hi there

The only hardware change I made was to install an extra 1Gb of RAM. I can't say for sure whether that had any effect on the CD & DVD drives.

I've not installed any daemon tools and also have no external hardware.

I've opened up the tower to check that everything (wire connections) is in place and that all seems OK. The fact that there's power to the drives would indicate that they are wired/plugged in OK.

Important Note: The BIOS is able to detect both drives as it lists them as 3rd & 4th Slaves and also has them as Boot options.

Just so confusing why Windows doesn't recognise them!

Cheers

Tarun

**mcquiggd** · 7 October 2006, 15:32

When you say 3rd and 4th slaves, I presume they are on seperate IDE channels - or are they SATA drives? Im suprised that, as you have not changed your hardware configuration, that they are not recognised.

Normally I would have thought, if using IDE, that if they were both set to be slaves on the same channel you wouldnt even see them both in the BIOS, but you might just check the following:

If using IDE (connects to an 80 pin socket on the motherboard, normally a wide thin cable), check the jumpers on the back of every drive attached to all IDE cables, and see if they are set to 'Cable Select' - sometimes labelled simply 'CS'. The other options are 'Master' or 'Slave'. 'Cable Select' means each drive automatically determines if it is the 'Master' or 'Slave' on that IDE cable - you cannot have two Masters or two Slaves on the same cable.

Other than that, I would say temporarily disconnect one drive at a time and see if the other is recognised by your operating system... might help deduce where the problem is....

If you have a mix of IDE CD / DVD drives, and SATA hard drives, then the BIOS will have a mode to use various modes such as 'PATA' for handling drives - personally at this stage I would not change any BIOS settings - but the BIOS can handle how it 'presents' the mixed set of drives to your operating system in different ways. As it describes them as '3rd and 4th Slaves', I would imagine you do indeed have a mix of IDE CD/ DVD and SATA hard disk(s).

The usual support techie question would be 'what have you recently changed'? As you say memory, the usual support techie response would be 'recheck the cables are attached properly'.

**ChimpMaster** · 7 October 2006, 16:47

Apologies I double checked and the 2 drives are Secondary Master and Secondary Slave in the BIOS.

So the BIOS sees them as these and Windows (being Windows...) fails to pick them up.

I'll pull out all the connections apart and try again.

I can't help but feel that the drives have both malfunctioned, but it is odd that it happened to both at the same time.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate the time you spent on this.

**Mordac** · 8 October 2006, 23:08

Sounds stupid, but try removing the new memory, and see if you get the same result. I've never heard of RAM having this effect, but you never know. Try googling the motherboard model and see if anyone else has had a similar problem. Like you say, the chances of losing 2 CD/DVD Drives at the same time is slightly less likely than the chances of me waking up next to Kylie.

**ratewhore** · 9 October 2006, 11:05

junk the box and buy a mac. you know it makes sense.

HTH

**Mordac** · 9 October 2006, 12:08

But what if he isn't an anally retentive graphic designer?

**wc2** · 9 October 2006, 12:39

I've dealt with this problem before.

From the registry Local Machine - System - CurrentControlSet - Control - Class - 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE103184/5 - Delete Upperflilters & Lowerfilters

Reboot

You might want to backup this part of the reg before removing the filters.

**expat** · 10 October 2006, 15:53

Originally posted by wc2

I've dealt with this problem before.

From the registry Local Machine - System - CurrentControlSet - Control - Class - 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE103184/5 - Delete Upperflilters & Lowerfilters

Reboot

You might want to backup this part of the reg before removing the filters.

Jesus! That makes it not play CDs?

PC not recognizing CD & DVD drives