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

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.