CD Drive not working properly

[rvbvanassoc]

Hi guys I'm new here and just got some help on starting my help and support service. It worked and it is now up and running. I have this other major problem that is driving me crazy. We had a power outage do to the hurricane in Texas that affected all of Ohio. Since then I can not access my D drive. It will play music CD's but will not install software. I can't even get the MS install wizard to open. When I click on D drive in my computer I get the message IS NOT ACCESSIBLE incorrect function. I tried to use my Dell resource CD to try to reinstall the driver but it will not run. I tried trouble shoot and it claims it is working and the driver exists (NOT). Any help would be greatly appreciated thank you...RV

[debasisdas]

question moved to windows forum.

[Nepomuk]

What a weird problem! I've renamed this thread, so as to attract more attention, but I have no idea, how I could help other than that. Hope, that someone else can.

Greetings,
Nepomuk (Moderator)

[AmberJain]

Hello,

Well, this is a really weird problem. But I faced something similar problem. I tried some random trobleshooting and got my CD drive to be up and running.

1. If you know the model number of your CD drive then you can download it's drivers from manufacturer's website and REinstall them. This one worked in my case.

2. Do you have more than one installation of Windows OS in your PC? If yes, try removing all except one of them. Multiple Windows installation on single hard drive may cause these problems sometimes.

3. Had you tried installing any driver/program recently? If yes, try to see if it caused the problem.

4. You can also try restoring your PC to an earlier time when your CD drive was working fine. If any restore point exists then try restoring to an earlier state.

5. Also, you may think that I am crazy, but try closing the CD drive door by manually pushing it (instead of pressing the button to eject/insert the CD drive). Some say that may not be good for your drive but I would love to know if that helps.

Hope this helps.........
AmbrNewlearner

[mac11]

I'd also suggest physically removing the drive, then start windows and let it see the drive is gone, then shutdown, reinstall the drive again and start up again.

[Studlyami]

The first thing i would say to do is go to device manager (right click on my computer and select manage, then click on device manager). Once in device manger click on the check box for DVD/CD-ROM drives and find the drive that you are having problems with. Right click on the drive and select uninstall. Reboot windows and windows should automatically detect new hardware and install a basic driver for the drive. Then in XP it should automatically install a driver for the CD rom drive. If in windows NT/2000 it should ask you to insert the driver disk or location on the hard drive where the driver file is. Note* in NT you will need a different disk drive/floppy disk to insert the driver file. You could also copy the driver file from the cd rom drive and put it on the computer and point the driver installation to that location. Hope this helps.

[AmberJain]

Hello,

@rvbvanassoc : Now that you have got lots of replies, I would suggest you to try the suggestions in following order:

REPLY #6 : by Studlyami
REPLY #5 : by mac11
REPLY #4 : by ambrnewlearner (i.e. me)

That would be probably the best path you should take now.

Hope this helps.........
AmbrNewlearner

[arnaudk]

I don't have an answer but I can say it's not so surprising that it will play audio CDs; CD/DVD drives have typically 3 cables sticking out the back: a power cable that goes to the power suppy, a data cable that goes to the IDE controller (on motherboard usually), and an analog or digital audio cable that goes straight to the sound card. Even if you unplug the data cable, most drives will still play audio through the direct audio connection.

Perhaps the data cable is badly connected or your IDE interface is fried. You could try make it a slave to your hard drive on the primary IDE chain if it's a master on the secondary IDE (assuming you have an IDE not SATA hard drive). Of course if its a laptop then disregard all this.

If you don't get it going but it still plays music CDs, consider adding a CD player to your car.