Explorer does not recognize optical drives. I have a Win 98 SE system.

I am unable to access d: or e: drive (Optical drives). Both have been installed for some time, both have LED indicator lighting that appears normal and both loading trays open and shut normally. No recent hardware or software changes.

System will still recognize A drive (floppy) C drive (HD) and USB thumb drive if installed.

Noticed that device manager only list floppy, HD and USB thumb drive.

Noticed that device manager for the Hard Disc controller lists the yellow exclamation point caution ! for Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)

Have tried rebooting and run regclean.

No other symptoms noticed.

Is this a hardware problem or a software glitch?

Can anyone provide troubleshooting suggestions?

thanks in advance

bern


Follow-up (for future reference, in case this happens to someone else):

It turned out that one of the drives had failed. Found it by disconnecting ribbon cable - one device at a time. After disconnecting the failed drive, the other showed up normally on reboot. What is interesting is that one failed drive affected both drives making it look like either a software problem or common hardware problem (ribbon cable or mother board).

I was able to troubleshoot this after reading archived responses to similar problems. Hope this info helps someone.

Thanks to all

NeedKarma

Did you recently uninstall any programs?

bnowack

Yes,

Some software associated with an I-Pod Shuffle and I-Tunes.

NeedKarma

Sometimes the uninstallation of software that has hooks into the cd-burning features messes up the 'upper/lower' limits in the Registry.

Try this fix:
Restore CD/DVD Drives to Explorer

bnowack

The link you mention specifies Windows XP. I've got Win 98 SE installed. Also, I answered your first question too quickly; the uninstall of the I-Pod/I-Tunes software was on a different computer. As far as I can recall, no recent software changes.

NeedKarma

Here's the very popular fix for Win98: http://aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

It's from this site if you want to browse it for more fixes in the future: Registry Patches

bnowack

I'll check it out. Thank you.

Bern

bnowack

Follow-up (for future reference, in case this happens to someone else):

It turned out that one of the drives had failed. Found it by disconnecting ribbon cable - one device at a time. After disconnecting the failed drive, the other showed up normally on reboot. What is interesting is that one failed drive affected both drives making it look like either a software problem or common hardware problem (ribbon cable or mother board).

I was able to troubleshoot this after reading archived responses to similar problems. Hope this info helps someone.

Thanks to all

NeedKarma

I'm glad you figured it out. I was sure of your comfort zone with opening up the case and checking cables so I was trying the software route first. Kudos to you.

bnowack

Thank you for your help. It's encouraging that these forums exist and that there are people such as yourself who are willing to share their expertise to help someone else.