Even though I'm fairly computer savvy(I've built several and sold a few), I'll start in Noob-ville since I just joined and the whole DVD-R thing is new to me. I will say I have learned a lot from the forums, but did not see this covered: About 2 weeks ago my home-made system, which is: Asus A7N8X w/500 watt psu XP 2400+ WD Caviar 80gb 1GB ram Radeon 9800 pro Sound Blaster Live Audigy Optorite 5201 CD-RW Optorite 4405 DVD-RW All dressed up in a modded purple Chieftec case! Anyway, 2 weeks ago I noticed on My Computer page, my cd and dvd drives were missing, and nothing put into either drive would play. In the hardware mgr, they had ?'s on them, and the info said there was a registry corruption that could not be corrected. They were still visible in the bios, also.I tried the system restore, which did not give me any dates to restore to(yes i create at least 1 a week). After consulting with 2 geek friends who were stumped, I did a clean wipe and re-installed Windows, which of course fixed the problem(kinda like overhaulin a motor cause the oil filter is stuck!) Well, a system I built for a co-worker( Biostar mobo/512 ram/no vidcard/same drives) did the same thing last week.I wiped his and reloaded also. now yesterday my system did it again! I had my HD partitioned, but used partition magic to change my partition size to move some stuff to safety before wiping C: , and when the partitioning was complete, my drives were back!And yes I have defragged C: and scan for viruses, and I have run a registry check. Now that I have written this 3-page essay, can anyone help me? I have tried to cover everything, because I know newbies usually get scolded for not giving ENOUGH info. so if anybody has heard of this before, speak up. One last note: I was switching all my cables from my pc to the one I was building, and switched back and forth several times. I tried to stay grounded, but could it be static? But my PC has been plugged up and running for 4 days(not continually) before it happened last night. in fact, I had just burned a cd, and was going to burn another when it happened,but that wasn't the case the other 2 times. Static? software compatibility? bad CD-RW? DVD-RW? wearing wrong socks? Any help would be appreciated. This problem may not even fit in this category, but like i said, you guys seem to know ya stuff. thx in advance.
Hi, Argyles will make a system go to hell in a handbasket. Try something in a solid color. Have you tied uninstalling the drives through Device Manager? That may help. Go to Device Manager > Expand the tree for DVD/CD ROM Drives > Find the drive in question, right click it and go to Properties > Under the Driver tab, select Uninstall then OK. Now reboot and Windows should detect and reinstall the drive. You should now check the DMA settings for your drives: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/IDE-DMA.mspx Unless you scooted around the carpet in your argyles and zapped the drives I doubt static would've killed your drives. A simple test would be to try the drives in a known good system and check their performance. Have you tried brand new cables? Are you using 80 pin cables? Do you get failed burns? Abnormally long burn times? _X_X_X_X_X_[small] "And there we saw the giants ... And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Numbers 13:33[/small]
A bit of advice for your next post - don't make it a solid block of words, try and break it up a bit. My brain friggin hurts from trying to read through that _X_X_X_X_X_[small] "And there we saw the giants ... And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." Numbers 13:33[/small]
thx 4 the quick reply. must be a night owl! (i work swing shifts myself, on 3 12-hr nights in a row now). i don't think i tried the uninstall. i tried diff cables on my bud's system with no change. DMA is enabled. Re: bad burns, not a single coaster yet( 25+, hallylooya!) I have been using the latest DVD Shrink with Nero 6. burns in about 30 min with 8X media. I did do a Norton ghost image this time, which should save a lot of time if it does happen again. and sorry about the block. it doesn't look the same when you're typing it as when it posts. Need a post preview. thx again. back to the dungeon.
