I am hoping you can help me "reset" my drives.

A few days ago I could not use my CD Rom drive nor burner as neither would read a CD. I went into the systems folder in the control panel and disconnected both from the device manger. I did this because there was a yellow icon over each drive and so I entered the troubleshooting menu and followed those directions.

After disconnecting both drives at the device manger screen I shut-down the PC. Then I opened up my case and unplugged the wires coming from both drives. I booted up again to make sure that the computer could not see the drives. Both were not listed on the device manager. So I then reconnected the cables after I did a shut down. When I booted up again, I was getting the same yellow icon messages on the device manager.

So I did these same steps again but now when I boot up the computer doesn't recognize any new hardware and so neither are listed in the device manager.

What step did I miss? And what should I do next? Lastly, what causes CD-rom drives and cd-writers to stop working?

Thanks for any help you can send!

I have heard of drives doing this when they go bad or start to go bad. Have you gone into the bios to see if the system sees them there at all. If they are not being shown in the bios then the problem is most likely with the drives or the power supply. How old is the system same with the drives did they come with the system or did you/someone install them later, and if so how old are the drives? Also when you disconnected them did you unplug all the wires even the molex power plug? You can also try to use another power plug to see if the problem is with the power supply. I have had a power supply have one or two power cables go bad for some reason. Hope this help let us know please.

There could be a couple of reasons. First you left out a key piece of info and that's your version of Windows. We would need to know that to tell you how to proceed.

Any electrical/mechanical device can fail. There may be a variety of reasons. The motor may have seized, electrical circuitry may have been damaged, heads may have become damaged. These and other things could cause it.

But the fact that 2 drives went at once indicates it's a drivers issue. And that's where the Windows version comes into play since reloaded the drivers differs.

Hi,
Since both drives stopped working at the same time, I doubt if they are "bad".
It will help to know your Windows Operating System, such as 98, 2000, XP, etc.
Please post back.
Best wishes,
fredg

Little Sir Echo is back! Almost 24 hours later and Fred posts an answer saying the Same thing I had already said. Now I'll wait for Fred to sign on as Labman24 and attack me.

I have the same problem. Both my CD Rom and my DVD-RW are mark with yellow ! And do not show in My Computer. I use Windows XP and when I look under properties in the Device Manager it says "Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)".

I have been to a number of boards researching this and one said a possible bad IDE Cable. I replaced this and no difference. Over the past week however the fan in the power supply has begun making some noise. I tried uninstalling the CD ROm and DVD and rebooting and on on attempt got a notice stating that I had not attached the power supply to the video card. I let it sit off for a half hour and rebooted and it loaded fine.

I suspect that my power supply is going bad and not supplying enough power to power up the Rom drives. Can anyone confirm this before I replace the power supply?

Thanks

A bad power supply is certainly a possibility. But I'm more inclined to suspect a bad motherboard. You need to bring it into a tech who can bench test the circuitry.

I have now even tried installing an external usb cd rom and get the same thing. The mother board is fine and all other external usb items work properly. Could it be a registry issue? I recently ran a registry medic program that could have removed something of importance?

ThAt happened with my laptop I just had to push the internal drive in farther
Youy may have to install it under NEW HARDWARE
PS I am NOT A NEWBIE!!