Unrelated thing: Disappearing CD-RW

[eirias]

Today I was mucking about with trying to set up a tiny LAN here with my laptop and my mom's PC. In doing this, some kind of Miniport adapter bridge installed itself, presumably due to the Network Wizard. Good, I thought, less work I'll have to do.

Couldn't get the networking to work, so I thought I'd copy the XP wizard onto a CD-RW and move it to my Win2K box, as it had suggested I do. And then I noticed - the CD-RW drive doesn't seem to exist. It's not listed in the device manager and nothing happens when you try to open the drive.

I don't know whether this is some bizarre result of my network mucking or not; I don't see how it would be, but Windows works in mysterious ways. Right now I'm scanning for viruses, as I know there's at least one virus out there that makes drives disappear. Has anyone else seen anything like this? Does anyone have advice?

Comments

[mokatz.livejournal.com]

Install Linux! ;-P

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Get a Mac. :-)

:P

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Serious replies only, please... this is my family's computer, and my mother has a fit if it changes in any way. When I told her it wasn't finding the CD-RW drive, she told me I might as well throw the whole thing out the window, and ran outside crying. I'd like to fix this, even though I have no idea how long it's been a problem or indeed whether it has anything to do with the changes I was making.

Seriously?

[mokatz.livejournal.com]

You might try a windows reinstall. That's kind of last resort though... I'm a bit out of practice w/ Windows, and it helps if I have the machine in front of me. Sorry.

Re: :P

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

sometimes if you force it to install the driver it magically finds the drive...

Re: :P

[eirias.livejournal.com]

That would be a good idea, only Compaq's documentation blows undescended dingo testicles, and I have no idea what make/model the CD-RW drive is. (There's not even relevant info on the model on the Compaq website...) I suppose it's fairly likely that opening the case might tell me - might be at least a part-number sticker that I could then Google - but I have a feeling my mom would flip out.

Thanks, though :)

Re: :P

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

well, that was going to be my suggestion... *generally* the drives have the manufacturer and stuff on a sticker on top.

Perhaps look for drivers for your model fo Compaq? I'm a little confused (too much brain fog) to tell if that's what you meant.

Otherwise... is there such a thing as a generic driver? I dunno, that might help.

Ohh! The bridge may have developed an IRQ conflict or somesuch, although I thought XP was supposed to prevent that.

Uhhh... my head is foggy now, I should sleep. Good luck!

Re: :P

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

With nothing happening even when you try to open the drive (with the button on the drive I'm assuming, not some software program), I'd suspect either a bad power cord attached, or a loose/disconnected power cord. How? Who knows. But if you can get inside without voiding warranties and stuff, go for it. Otherwise, call the warranty people and bitch, or just up and void it.

If that doesn't work, then yeah, try doing the whole, "installing new hardware" stuff. Maybe even just having it search for new stuff it could find it.

Good Luck! If you need some help, I can walk through with XP Pro on the phone with you and try to figure stuff out, but I'm not too experienced troubleshooting that OS.

As for family computers and fits thrown, BOY do I hear you! I just had to replace my family's Win98 (not 98SE) box with my WinXP Pro box. YIE! It has "entirely too many choices!!" Whatever, they'll deal. Heh, all these choices, or no computer! bwahahahaha!

Good luck fixing the drink holder device ;)

Re: :P

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Hi zeldajean! Thanks for the suggestions!

I did try the "Install New Hardware" thing, but it's difficult when it doesn't auto-detect the "new" hardware, because then you have to know exactly what it is you're installing, and unfortunately I don't. :/

Also unfortunately, the machine is no longer under warranty; it was purchased Oct. 2001 and only had 1 year. I do believe that the CD-RW has worked at some point between now and then - my mom tells me she used to use it for taking photos off of photo-CDs, as recently as a month ago. So I'd be really surprised if it were a hardware connection problem.

Perhaps relevantly, after installing the XP network doohickey (some thing calling itself a miniport, aimed at making a "bridge" between this PC's network card and my laptop's), two other devices freaked as well - the printer and DVD-ROM both uninstalled themselves on reboot. However, those errors just showed up as "New Device - Install Driver" or some such, and so were easy to fix. This, not so much. (As is always the case with such wonkiness, disabling the new device didn't help. :P )

Re: :P

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Sorry for the flip comment earlier... My overall experience with PC hardware is that unless you carefully hand-select the components you use -- and even sometimes when you do -- it's largely an unending sea of misery and disappointment. On the other hand, I've spent about 15 years around Macs and the only significant hardware problem I ever encountered was a series of bad Zip drives (not the manufacturer's fault, it was during the great "click of death" fiasco). They are also generally mom-friendly.

Good luck.

Re: :P

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Thanks... ordinarily sarcasm is appreciated, but life with my mom is, er, a little trying these days ;).

I've actually not had good luck with Macs - it seems to be a singular ability of mine to get them to crash. Nothing as bad as hardware trouble, though.

Re: :P

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

Given your description of your mom's reaction, I gathered that things were a little wacky.

MacOS 7-9 were rather crashy due to their lack of protected memory, but OSX is a rock. It really takes some effort to upset it.

Still... good luck.

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

If pushing the button on the outside of the CD-RW does not cause it to open, and there are no lights, then it's not getting power and there is nothing that you can do in software to make it. Similarly, I can't think of anything that you could do in software to make that happen.

If that is the case, then my guess is that it happened when you moved the machine to plug in the cable. The bad news is that you're just not going to know one way or the other (if it exhibits the above symptoms) without opening up the computer.

[exilejedi.livejournal.com]

I had a couple of different Creative Labs CD drives that were really unresponsive to button presses. They would only open/close when they were good and ready -- sometimes you'd have to wait 10+ seconds, other times it would just ignore the eject press. I sometimes had more luck in getting those drives open during a reboot situation, when there was no OS/no drivers loaded that might be causing issues.

But yeah, if there are no blinky lights, then something bad may have happened. It might be as simple as a loose power cable. Or the drive itself could have realized that it's out of warranty and given up the ghost (as hardware is wont to do). A little internal investigation and jiggery-pokery may be in order...

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Well... my old computer had a virus once, I think in the boot sector, that made all of the drives disappear, just like this one has. And I'm trying to remember now whether I was able to open the CD-ROM drive at that point, and I just can't remember :/. Are you familiar with anything like this (i.e. can you tell whether it'd be an exception to your rule or not)?

Not sure that it's relevant, as Norton didn't find any boot sector virii, but I want to make *sure* that this couldn't possibly be a software problem before I go opening the case.

also

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I don't actually think I moved it at all when I went to plug the cable in, since the back is accessible - if I did it wasn't more than a couple inches.

Would going into the BIOS help? Is there a list of recognized hardware components there? I'm pretty sure the light doesn't blink on startup, either.

Re: also

[thekat03.livejournal.com]

i'm guessing you dont have another desktop computer at your disposal to test with?
if you do, i'd suggest taking the cd-rw drive out and throwing it into a different computer to see if it works or not
if you only have this computer to work with, i'd try unplugging all the connections to the drive and then plugging them back in again
if its not lighting up or anything, then it sounds to me like a hardware issue

though... another suggestion: go into the bios and see what devices are there
windows tries to be smarter than you, but doesnt always succeed
sometimes it wont see something that you and the bios can see

Re: also

[dolohov.livejournal.com]

The BIOS should have a boot order, which may very well have a CD option. Placing the CD option first will force it to check the CD drive before loading Windows. If you have a bootable CD, you could put it in the drive and reboot. That would be proof, to me, whether the drive works.

If it doesn't work, then you have no options but to open up the machine and examine the connections. There are two; power (smaller with thicker wires) and IDE (ribbon cable). Make sure that both are firmly connected. That's the technical advice. The social advice is do this while your mother is out.

If it does work, then there are a few options. Check under the hardware profile for any devices with an "!" next to them, whether it thinks it knows what they are or not. Remove those devices and reboot, making sure that you know where the drive's drivers are. For each one that comes up, make it try those drivers before letting Windows pick one.

hey chica...

[ayb2.livejournal.com]

on an unrelated note, my sister is working on a school science project on how listening to music influences people's visual properties / mental capacities and I was wondering if you would mind her emailing you?