My problem is the opposite of the one where the system doesn't see your DVD drive. Mine sees a drive where one used to be but is long gone. It's causing problems with the new drive I installed in its place as the system still shows the old drive listed by name in the "E" position. The old, removed drive doesn't show up in Device Manager or Disc Management but stays in the My Computer list claiming the "E" slot. How do I convince WIndows XPSP2 to let go of the past and let me move on cleanly with a new DVD drive?
Since no one seems to be able to tell me how to fix this I did an experiment on my own. I booted into Safe Mode. And hey, the Plextor (E didn't show up in "My Computer". So I went to Disk Management and reassigned my storage HD (which was "G") to "E". But when I rebooted into regular mode nothing had changed. The erroneous Plextor drive still had the "E" and the storgae HD was back to "G" when I looked in "My Computer".. I mention this in hopes that the fact that the erroneous drive doesn't show up in "My Computer" will give some knowledgeable person a clue as to how to help me fix this problem.
Disconnect your DVD drive and then go to hardware manager and uninstall the secondary IDE controller and re-boot your PC. See if that has cured the showing up the odl dvd rom drive problem. if it has, get me back to me, if not, get back to me
Thanks for the advice but no go. I've been trying to re-install WIndows from the disc, but I keep getting File Copy Errors, each time a different file, which makes sense since the original problem is screwing up how Windows sees the drives. Is there anything left to try before throwing this computer in the dumpster and buying a new one?
Deff don't throw the PC away - that's pointless. If your windows disk is corrupt, then that may be the cause of your problems re-installing. MS will probably send you a replacement if you phone up and ask. However, maybe your HDD has gone, your IDE controllers bust, IDE ribbon damaged - a number of things it could be. A fresh install would count out any hardware issues though, so see if you can do that again - maybe put the HDD into another PC to reformat it and then try to install onto the blank HDD.
