CD Drive Wont Recognize Anything / No Writing/ No Spinning ?
Sep 21, 2005
Housemates go to Reno and bought a computer (an Emachine)The other day, they come to me saying the CD drive isn't working so I check it out. Insert a CD and nothing happens. No recognition, no whirring, no spinning, nada mucho. I defrag, clean up C, remove two viruses with AVG Antivirus, troubleshot hardware only to find the message, "this device is working properly", updated Windows XP, looked for a driver update but said, "no update drivers available",
Lately I have been experiencing a temporary slowdown/freeze and I notice that the hd light is blinking. I can be moving the mouse across the page, for example, when it will start responding erratically or stop. As this is happening the hd light blinks even though nothing is being saved or opened. I have disabled indexing, run virus checks and adware and spyware removal tools. I do have a wireless router attached but i haven't checked to see if it happens with my laptop also.
I recently destroyed file structure due to mistakenly writing a partition table to the wrong hard disk drive on my machine while installing an experimental version of OS X. The saving factor is that the partition that may have formatted was only 20GB out of 200GB and the rest was unallocated free space. I have installed a temporary instance of WinXP to use data recovery software and recover the majority of files from the drive (it is installed on the non-corrupted drive).
I'm trying to copy some files from my PC, but it doesn't recognize that I've got a dvd burner, it sees it only as a cd burner, it will play dvds, but wont let me erase or burn.My pc has started getting some bugs recently, and I need to hurry to backup my files, before it takes the big crash.
I have been able to write text files to my CD-RW until recently which may be after I received and automatic update from XP. I am using the MS CD Writer, I receive the error "There is no disc in the drive" when selecting properties is shows that the Discs have no free space, these are all brand new out of the package discs. I had this problem previously immediately after I upgraded to XP SP2, MS provided an executable that I ran and corrected the problem.
When I finally finished creating a new Access Database from scratch on my 1 1/2 yr old Acer machine and went to save it to my thumb drive (G drive on the new machine) to transfer it to my wife's machine, I get the message "G is not accessable, access is denied". I had transferred a preliminary version just the day before to my wife's machine using the thumb drive which still works well in her machine.
I have a primary drive (maxtor) whice xp is running on and a second hard drive (maxtor also) which i have been using for some time for storing files. i had windows xp home and everything worked fine for a long while. recently since i upgraded to xp pro, the hard drive icon for the secondary drive disappears from my computer. i even tried saving stuff to the drive from ms word or something and it is not recognized. usually a restart will solve the problem, but after i let the computer run, (till like the next day) it will happen again. i dont know yet what event causes it to dissapear. i sometimes use standby, but i dont think that is consistent with the problem
Running XP Professional SP3. I am curious why Windows does not recognize an internal DVD ROM as a DVD? It sees it under My Computer as a CD Drive. But, if you put a DVD disc in the drive, then it sees it as a DVD..... THE DVD ROM is an LG Model GH22NP20.
When i plug in my pen drive into my computer, i open My computer where i can see it, but when i try to open it, a message pops up saying "insert a disk in unit H:" or something like this. This message usually appears when there is no disk in that drive and you try to open it. but the pen drive is plugged in! not even mac os read the pen drive.
I had to do a reinstall of XP on a brand new HD I just bought and I can't remember how to get XP to utilize my seperate HD I use for storage. It keeps asking me to format it. I have all my data on it so I definatley can't do that. I did something a year ago to get this to work, but I can't remember what I did. I installed XP service pack 2. Anyone know what to do? I remember I did something in disk managment. The drive I can't get to work is used for my backups. It is formatted and partitioned using XP and the same NTFS system as the new HD with XP on it. Even my bios detects the 320gb HD at 136gb max capacity. So its not showing that the drive is a 320gb HD. I am pretty sure my bios specified that it was 320 gigs before.
When I go into disk managment the drive I am having problems says it has 128gb as a primary partition(in blue), but then in the black highlighted box to the right says 170 gb unallocated. Shouldn't all the drive be in blue as being partitioned like it was before I did an install?
I have 2 computers with the same problem. Neither will recognize a blank cd or DVD in the DVD-RW drives. When I go to My Computer and click on the drive, it either tells me to insert a CD or that the drive is inaccessible/incorrect function. This is a recent phenomenon.
I have an HP Media PC M400Y. It is a P4 3.0 Ghz with 1GB ram. It originally came with MCE2002. Last week I upgraded to MCE2005 to use the media extender feature with my new X-box 360. Here is the problem and some background.
About a year ago, I had installed a second SATA hard drive, Seagate Baracuda 300GB, model ST3300831AS. This drive was plug and play into the motherboard and never had any issues. Before reformating the main C: drive, I moved all my valuable data on the SATA drive.
I then turned the PC off, removed the power and signal cables from the SATA drive. (I'm a novice, and didn't want to take any chances of erasing the SATA drive, while reformating the main C drive)
I've just installed a new WD 120 GB hard drive in the second drive bay of my Dell Dimension 8300 running XP (with all current updates). Windows refuses to assign it a drive letter and it can't be seen on My Computer or Windows explorer. Device Manager insists that it is installed and working properly. The problem persists whether the jumpers are for cable select or master-slave.
I don't really understand it.I initially used G-parted to partition my 250gb drive into a 100, 75, and 55.Then I tried installing Windows XP SP3 and it says it doesn't recognize them, so I deleted those partitions and made new ones (the same size though) and it asked me to reboot. After I rebooted it prompted me again with Press Enter to install Windows, so I do and it says some crap about how it doesn't recognize any hard drive plugged in.BIOS recognizes the drive and its size.
I was told I could take a hard drive from a windows 98 computer and the person is buying a new Windows xp so I can hook up the win 98 hard drive as a slave to the new computer with win xp so I can drop and drag or cut and past files that they want off the 98 hard drive put on their new computer. Now If their new computer with the win xp on it, if there is an ide cable going to the hard drive and nothing else then I can hook up the win 98 hard drive to the same ide cable as a slave and no problem.
However if the windows xp computer has the hard drive on the ide cable and also the cd-rom then is it ok just to hook up another ide cable to their mother board and hook the hard drive from the windows 98 computer on the end of that ide cable as the master? and by turning the computer off, and then hooking up the hard drive and then turning the computer back on it should reconize the windows 98 hard drive in my computer right away right?
If I would have to put the windows 98 hard drive in the new computer on a seperate ide cable is it ok to have it as master? cause the hard drive that is already in it would be master to but it would be on a different ide cable. I am hoping the new computer just has the hard drive on an ide cable by itself so I can just hook the other one up as a slave and get the files and be done with it. How ever if someone could give me a couple or three scenario's with ide cables and hooking this up I would be very much appreciatetive.
I am trying to install XP Pro. After I boot from the CD everything looks good until it's time to select which HD to install in. It won't recognize it, I've found out there are multiple problems with these new large HDs. People talk about the 137 gigs limit, upgrading the drivers via Floppy, even customizing an installation CD image with an 'OEM' folder below i386. I've tried many things but still can't have it recognized. This box doesn't come with a floppy and I don't have one. Why the freaking dependability on a floppy drive.
I just replaced my old DVD ROM with a new DVD-RW drive. The system writes to the new drive fine (I have burned a couple of Video DVDs) but when I boot the system the Bios says it doesn't see the D: (CD) or E: (DVD) drive. Once I am into Windows XP I can also play CDs from the CR-RW drive but I can't use it to copy new software onto the system.
I would like to have a go at this slipstreaming thing, since I cannot install Windows XP Pro (it's a retail version from my desktop pc, which I'm now getting rid of) on my Toshiba laptop - it won't recognize the hard drive. I know how to do it, but I don't know which files (SATA drivers) to include in it. The harddrive is new (didn't come with the laptop) and it's a Samsung HM120JI, but it seems to be compatible, since the recovery disk worked fine and I am now running Windows XP home edition.
My brother went to My Computer one day and saw that there was no disc drive there, it was working in the past, but now it doesn't show up, I don't think he did anything unusual. But it shows up under Safely Remove Hardware Wizard with "Samsung CD Drive" or something like that.
I'm connecting a 30GB Travelstar Hard Drive via an external USB 2.0 case to my Thinkpad T40 with Windows XP (pro). Windows immediately recognized it. However, the hard drive does not show up under Windows Explorer. I can go into Device Manager, click on Disk Drives, and it does show the new drive there (along with my main hard drive, which is a 80 GB hard drive).
I cannot figure out how to make it show up in Windows Explorer with an Drive Letter assigned to it and thus, how to actually use it.
I'm struggling to connect my Sony Handycam DCR-SR42 to my Compaq Laptop, Windows XP.It works on other computers without a problem that's why I think it must be some setting in XP. I plug it in when prompted by installation software and the camera goes to :'preparing' Then immediately the windows found new hardware creen pops up. On the other computers that screen didn't come up and the camera would go straight into connecting' mode.I tried switching the 'found new hardware' off by disabling the plug and play in'services' with no luck.When I connect the camera while I'm starting up the laptop, it goes straight into 'connecting' mode but unfortunately that stops as soon as windows is started.I would like windows to detect my camera as a drive and not 'other devices
I have a laptop which after I purchased it and installed my own backup utility and created an image. I then started my windows xp home eddition with the cd and went to the section to redo the partitions. I deleted the partion for the recovery however after doing so it is not shown as unpartiton space. The system should have 80 gb hard drive however the statement above the partion says only 75gb is available to use. This is the same total as on the control panel / disc management. How can I get XP to recognize the entire hard drive space?
I have a IBM T40 laptop running WinXP SP2. I have been using this machine for many years, including it's 2 USB ports. Some time ago, I experienced that I had to reconnect my external USB Lacie drive many times before my computer would recognize it. I would get the message that "Windows doesn't recognize the device", but reconnecting it again and again would eventually get it to work.But now things got worse. I can no longer use the USB port on my cable modem (Motorola) because it is never recognized, and the external drive is also never recognized.
Well i tried to install windows on a used 80gig hd. It ended up hanging at the Setup is inspecting your computers hardware configuration. So i searched around a bit and it said my hd needed to be repartitioned so i said instead of that id go out and buy a new 500gig that was only 80 dollars. So i put the hd in and tried with this and it still hangs at teh same screen. For some reason i cannot get passed the "Setup is inspecting your computers hardwear configuration" screen. I then put in another CD of windows but the 64 bit version to try that one to see if it were the CD that were bad. And it went straight into the setup but then did not recognize my harddrive was there.
I've got a very annoying problem with XP that I just can't figure out. I have spent hours and hours trying to fix this and posted on several forums to no avail, so any help would be much appreciated.My laptop died last week when I spilt water all over it. The harddrive was not effected and stayed completely dry.I am basically trying to save the data on the harddrive and completely wipe/format it.
I bought a 2.5" SATA > USB enclosure/caddy and put my laptop HDD into the enclosure. When I plugged the enclosure into my spare PC using the power/USB Y cable, the enclosure powers up and the LED light comes on. I can also feel/hear the laptop HDD inside spinning. A message comes up on the PC saying "New hardware found; USB mass storage device".
I am running XP Pro on my computer. On another drive I have windows 7. My computer stopped booting to my XP drive all of a sudden, but it would let me boot to my Windows 7 drive. That lasted for about 3 days. Now I can't boot to either drive. When I start the computer it says there is no HDD. I tried to use the XP disk to repair, that didn't work., so I thought I'd do an XP install. But my hard drive doesn't show up all the time. Or it will show the HDD but upon trying to pick a partition to set up XP in, it then tell me there is no HDD. I get the blue screen of death, and have to manually force a shut down. Other times it tell me that the HDD is RAW, and it needs to be formatted. How can I get the HDD to format? Is there a way to do it through DOS. Sometimes I can't even get to the DOS prompt. The bootup section is corrupt. I need to repair it, but can't if the system doesn't see my HDD.
Previously, my laptop did recognize the drive but for some reason it is now not finding it. I have plugged the drive into another computer and it is recognized. The laptop will recognize other devices which I plug into it. I have checked for viruses and have also tried restoring to an earlier time but no luck recognizing it
I've been using an USB enclosure successfully for some time with no problem. I upgraded to a Maxtor 100 gig in the same enclosure. When turned on it does the "plug and play" chimes and it shows up in the device manager as installed and working properly. But it is not shown in My Computer as a drive letter.
Dell dual core, 1 gig RAM, Windows XP service pack 2
I have an external USB 300GB Seagate drive that used to work fine.Then, periodically XP would not recognize when I turned it on. A re-boot would fix the problem. Now, XP won’t recongnize the drive at all. I get an "unknown device" error. I have a USB 2.0 card I plug the drive into, and all other devices in that card work fine. The device driver manager says all is well, except of course with the "unknown device" it notes, which is the external drive.
At first I thought it was BIOS not autodetecting my HDrive capacity. But in the setup screen it indicates the correct size.However, in WindowsXP-My Computer, it still says my harddrive is 20GB rather than 40GB.
