Case Of The Disappearing CD / DVD Drives
May 14, 2008
I am running Windows XP SP2 on an IBM NeVista that has a CD drive and a DVD multi drive.These used to be drive D and E. Just recently, for some unknown reason, it seems that Windows no longer 'sees' the CD drive and only 'sees' the DVD drive, which (I'm positive) used to be drive E but now shows up as drive D. This is weird enough but the really weird thing is that I cannot play or load anything in either.If I put a CD or DVD in drive d (the DVD drive that XP can see in 'My Computer), nothinh happens.It doesn't play or autostart and if I hit 'open' on the drive, it says to please insert a disk.I desperatly need to relaod some software and of course now, neither one of the droves work. I considered deleting the drivers of each of them and then (I assume) have Windows try to re-find the drivers but at this point, XP, nor the hardware device manager in system properties, even 'see; the CD drive.
I am at a loss as to what to do to try and get these drives back. I'm not aware of anything 'weird' happening recently (I think this problem has been going on for a few months now) and everything else seems to be working ok for the most part. I thought about actually physically removing both drives and then physically re-installing them again but I really don't want to have to go take everything apart unless I have to.
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Nov 21, 2009
Have an issue with XP. Here is the story. XP on the master HHD and Ubuntu on the slave HDD. When I put the 2 HDD in a different case with a different MB, Ubuntu worked fine, but XP gets stuck on "Starting Up", but when I put the HDD back to the old MB, every thing works just fine.
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Aug 10, 2005
I have stopped getting sounds from inside the coumpter like a beep when I hit "Caps Lock". The sound through the speakers is fine.When I go to Control Panel>Device Control I get the worngin box "RUNDLL .An exception occured while trying to run.
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Feb 7, 2008
I use this laptop from my work truck and I keep it in a zippered laptop case for protection. My questions have to do with cooling it. Is it ok for me to keep the laptop in its case while I'm using it? My usage when turned on would be for 30 minutes to an hour and than would be turning it off for a little while and than back on again. The usage would be basically surfing the net only and not running high end programs or gaming. I was also wondering if it was possible to maybe put a cooling device if needed under the laptop in the case? I also realize a 7200 rpm hard drive would generate more heat.
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Aug 22, 2006
I have a interesting problem. The OS buttons have gone missing. They are still there and you can click on them if you know the location but they are not displayed. For example if you bring up display properties all the tabs at the top, and all buttons on the screen are not drawn, nor are the text labels. And it is not only display properties, anything that uses the same draw tecniques no longer draw. And even stranger, it is this way even in safe mode.
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Jul 28, 2005
I have done some serious Googling and come up with nothing. As with all the other posts here, I too hope someone can help.I have (had) a localhost that I used for my VB.net projects. No problems whatsoever...until a couple days ago. I use the localhost on my PC so as to not affect anything live. I installed a Windows Update which had KB903235 and KB901214. A day later I went to load a project in VB.net from my localhost. Normally in the Open Project dialog box, localhost is selected and I get a listing of all my projects. Now, I get nothing just blank. No errors or anything. If I use My Network Places and try to view localHost, it also shows nothing. However, if I look in My Computer and go to C:Intepubwwwroot, everything shows up fine(yipee). Somehow, I lost the link between the two and I can't figure out how to get it back. Like I said, before the recent update, everything was fine, but now I can't load my localhost projects. I have changed absolutely nothing recently(other than the update) and haven't had any other problems that would make you think could have caused this. So, since the update is the only recent system change, I'm kind of leaning toward it as the cause.
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Apr 2, 2006
Everything was fine last night when i was on my computer but when i woke up this morning and booted her up i recieved the "NTLDR is missing" error message with instructions to use control+alt+delete to restart and try again. I have not recently installed any new hardware or changed configurations and the only new software is Diablo2 and its expansion which has been on my computer for a week now (its run fine in the past and never caused any problems). I've been reading through the forums for most of the day and tried several different suggestions to fix my problem but to no avail. I've tried using a boot disk i made off of a friend's computer, rebuilding the boot record using the recovery console, and i even tried that NTLDR "fixer" disk that i downloaded from a link i frequently see posted. Nothing has worked. The only interesting thing is that when i use that fixer program (the one that gives you 10 boot options and you have to go through every one to find one that works) is that instead of getting a missing NTLDR message, i get a hal.dll error instead! So i go back into my XP cd and expand the hal.dll into the system32 folder on my drive and try again but now i'm back to the NTLDR error!
I really dont know what to do here and any help is appreciated! Also, i'm not tp sure how vital this is but my drive is labeled D: although it is the only HDD in my computer, when i try to use the recovery console i only have one option for an OS to explore and it is labeled C:. I'm not sure if how this happened is important to my current situation but i can explain it if necessary. Again, any suggestions here would be a big help and hope to hear from you soon. Oh, formating is also out of the quesion as i have no backups of my current papers, projects, and other data.
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Oct 14, 2010
I was using my computer, and it froze completely. Only thing I could do is Alt + Tab, but it wouldnt bring up anything. So I restarted it, using the button on the computer itself. After that the "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start successfully. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this." message came up. I have the options (Start in safe mode / Safe mode with networking / Safe mode with command prompt / Last known good configuration setting (most recent setting that worked) / Start Windows normally.) and everything, there is a countdown for starting windows normally, but for some reason my arrow keys dont work. I tried both num pads and the normal arrow keys and nothing works, including enter.
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Apr 8, 2007
I have a computer that has a normal C drive with windows XP installed. I added a second maxtor drive for my data drive. It seems when I add my second drive to my windows xp system it causes XP to lock up with a big blue screen after a certain period of time. It usually is when I have intense drive activity when I am installing programs such as visual studio or some thing like that. Both drives are in the Windows XP NSPF format so I don't think that is the problem.I get tired of reinstalling Win XP everytime this occures.
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Jul 18, 2005
running XP Pro SP2. Have a 2.5" HDD from a Toshiba Laptop (XP Home SP1 / FAT32) that I have in a USB case. The case plugs into the USB port of Desktop computer and hey presto.should be able to access the drive. However Cannot see the drive in Windows Explorer. Have gone into disk manager and the drive is showing but there is no drive letter assigned and no way of doing so. Option is greyed out on right-click over drive. I have tried changing the drive letter of the cd/dvd drive. I have no mapped drives that could complicate matters. Have tried re-scanning drives no joy. Have even tried uninstalling Enhanced USB2 Host. no joy.
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Dec 4, 2004
How can i get a cd for win xp home as the system never came with it and now I have to reload.I have the product key on the dell personal computer case?
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Mar 23, 2008
My load times have always been pretty long using XP with my setup and is almost up to a minute or more from power on, but my load light was always working and doing something and I just got use to it. I just installed two small spot fans and as soon as I powered on my boot times have gone from a minute or so now to about 6 minutes. Windows will even load without icons, windows bar, or anything but sits there looking at my desk top background for about 3 minute or so and sits idle. Then after the 3 minutes of idle my load light starts working like crazy and everything comes on.
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Dec 5, 2008
I'm responsible for several Windows XP Pro computers running SP3. For some strange reason the cursor on the Welcome Screen disappears intermittently. This happened well before the installation of SP3. I've Googled my heart out looking for a solution but couldn't find anything substantial. Some blame a rogue windows update which I've uninstalled. Some have also said the fault lies with Fast User Switching which I've now disabled. The problem is still present, though. I know I can do CTL+ALT+DEL twice but this is a hindrance to the less tech savvy folks on my staff.
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Mar 14, 2007
On my desktop, Windows keeps bringing up a message saying it�s almost full. It�s the Western Digital 120Gig ide drive, not the 500Gig Western Digital SATA drive I just installed. And yes, the problem existed before I put the new HD in. In fact it's the reason I upgraded the HD, but left the 120 Gig b/c it was still running fine. The 500Gig is partitioned into 4 125Gig section.The main 120 Gig drive is partitioned into 2 drives and the C: is only like 30 Gigs, with the remaing being set as D: drive. It said in the My Computer properties it was down to like 200Mb or less. I moved files to the D: drive and deleted mass cr*p and haven�t put anything else on there. It said I had like 1 or 2 Gigs of free space after that.Now the message is coming back up again and saying I�m down to like 200Mb again.
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Feb 3, 2010
Recently a program that I was running on Windows XP could not load because it could not find a particular file (msvcr71.dll). I downloaded the ZIP file from dll-files.com and extracted it to the recommended windows/system directory; everything then went fine. However, I shut down my system every night and when I started up in the morning the program again would not run and I found that the required file was no longer in the systems directory. How can I maintain the file where it should be?
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Jan 26, 2006
I'm running Windows XP Home SP2 on a Dell Dimension 4600 w/ 2.4 ghz processor and 1.5 GB of RAM. I also have dual monitors with my desktop expanded across both screens. Usually when I am loading huge programs the mouse cursor will freeze in place. The mouse still works, but the cursor doesn't move (so i can still click on things by guessing where the cursor would be). However, the cursor will only freeze on one of the two screens. When I drag the "ghost cursor" over to the other screen, it shows up again and works fine on the opposite screen (but still doesnt work on the original screen). Also, if I'm really unlucky the cursor will disappear on one screen and then eventually on the other screen as well. I ran spyware and anti-virus scans, and spyware was clean but AVG anti-virus "identified virus Java/OpenStream". I don't know if that has anything to do with the cursor problem. Also, sometimes when loading programs I get an "EAccessViolation" and I have no idea if that has anything to do with this problem. If I did a bad job explaining the problem, I have the exact same problem as this guy:
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Apr 20, 2006
I have setup a wireless network between two computers in my office and have installed some software that will automatically backup folders on each of the two computers.It work by backing up certain folders on computer 1 to the hard disk on computer 2 and vice versa.I also have a program installed on both computers that uses the data on computer 1.simplify the process of locating the data on my network I have created virtual drives using the Map Network Drives function in Windows. However; if I start up my computer and open these programs - they can not find the drives, I have to open My Computer first and double click on the drives before the programs will read from them. I am guessing that for some reason Windows is not connecting to these drives, even though I have set them to "reconnect at logon".
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Aug 14, 2005
A site http://icsfamily.com, When I browse using IE 6 from specific machine, and afterlogin if I stay in site and browse to different pages, or surf out and in again I am asked to log in again. The problem started only now, when using Mozilla it is OK, when using IE on another machine it is also OK. When I login and open cookie folder I see the file and actually see it disappear few seconds after. I have sent the cookie to the support guys, but they said its OK and am sure the problem is my side as Mozilla is OK and other machines are OK.
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Nov 21, 2007
It's not the biggest problem in the world but all of the games provided by windows have just disappeared. Literally I logged on, went to play spider solitaire and it wasn't there! And I haven't done anything to it. If anyone knows of a way of getting them back that would be helpful. And also Windows deleted the flash player device, just randomly. And I've downloaded it again but it still doesn't work.
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Jul 5, 2006
I have a 300gb hard drive split into two paritions: 20gb to use as a boot drive and the other 280gb for storage. The problem is the space on my boot drive keeps diminishing even though I don't install or add any additional files to it. I think this has been happening since I installed Windows XP, but now it's getting ridiculous. I only have about 300mb left out of 20gb.What's even stranger is that when I select all the folders in my boot drive and check the amount of disk space they are using, it's only about 12gb....where are the rest of the 8gb going? Some have suggested that it is my paging file that is taking up the space, but my paging file is only 768mb per drive.
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Mar 7, 2010
I've been having a problem for the last few weeks. As I work on my computer the free space on my C drive decreases drastically. My drive is partitioned between C & D. When I restart, all my free space comes back. I just had to restart because I was down to 80 K. When I started I had 16.5G available. It's been about 2 hours and I'm down to 15G. I've run my anti-virus. About the time it started I installed a back up hard drive (which is intermittently attached to this laptop) and WD anywhere backup software.
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May 14, 2008
I have XP2 SP2 and for the last few days my system tray keeps diasppearing. Sometimes it comes back, other times the only way to get it back is to restart my pc, which is getting very annoying now.It happens whatever browser I use, IE7, Firefox and Windows.
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Feb 24, 2007
Some but not all attachments sent to me with Outlook Express emails don't arrive in my In Box. When I ask the sender to repeat but use my GoogleMail account, the attachments arrive fine. I'm using a vanilla IBM Thinkpad R52 running Windows XP as supplied and fairly ordinary applications. I thought it might be my virus software (I was using Super AntiSpyware which is quite aggressive) but I've deleted this and all other anti virus ware and the problem persists
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Nov 30, 2005
I have attached 4 files below to illustrate what is going on.... don't worry about the discoloration as I had to save to 256 to get the pic sall enough to paste here and the color has nothign to do with the problem. I am running XP SP2 with system restore turned off and mission critical information so I really want to avoid a rebuild and don't want to install ontop of whats in use. Missing Tabs.bmp - this is what I see when i open up the Display properties (notice all tabs missing!)
Missing Tabs - black outline.bmp - If I hit the left and right arrow keys notice the little black outline its almost as though the tab is there just VERY small, I did click in those general areas and each one I click on it will change so its almost as thought its really small and the 5 tabs only occupy the far left of that bar......
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Feb 3, 2008
why when I click on my little yellow update shield to view my updates it disappears.
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Jan 30, 2010
I have an issue with my task bar it disappears. This only seems to happen when I leave the PC alone for a while, never while I'm using it. I've tried the normal tricks (running 'explorer.exe', auto-hiding and un auto-hiding etc.)I've got Spyware Doctor running, have CCcleaner running on startup checking registry and redundant files. I can get the taskbar back by restarting PC, but that's a bit of a pain, if you could help, that would be great.
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Jun 7, 2004
Previously I had my computer setup so that the QUICK LAUNCH toolbar would display program icons when my computer was started. Now, whenever I reboot, the toolbar disappears and I have to right click on the task bar, select toolbars, and select Quick Launch. Any ideas why this may be happening or how to prevent this from being removed each time. I tried locking the taskbar, but that didn't help.
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Mar 20, 2007
I have attempted to post two threads to you today. I wonder how much chance this one has of getting through? My problem is that emails have been disappearing at an alarming rate over the last two days. I spent over an hour writing to make a very serious complaint to a major company, saved it to draft and minutes later it had disappeared. Only the heading was left as a draft email.
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Dec 27, 2007
I recently installed the program registery fix and i believe it has caused my Cd and DVD drives or the paths to these drives to be deleted from windows as they do not show up in my computer. I have tried the options in the following list but none of them have helped me, i'm really stuck but i can't fix the problem.
- I've tried deleting the upper and lower filters but they are not in the selected registery.
- I've tried a system restore but i can't go back to a previous point before the registery fix install.
- I've tried unplugging the leads and restaring but this didn't help.
- I've tried microsoft guided help but it couldn't find the upper and lower filters.
- i beleive they are still listed in my bios but don't know exactly what i'm looking for when in bios.
I don't know where to go from here, i also run alcohol 120% a virtual drive software and the registery fix has had no affected on these drives but i'm wondering if this maybe why the program registery fix deleted my actual drives becasue of the virtual drives and replaced the paths to my actual drives but i'm not sure it's just a guess. I've deleted the virtual drives and tried the steps above but i've had no luck.
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Jun 26, 2010
My operating system is Windows XP Pro. As of yesterday all was fine, I even burned a DVD. Today "My Computer" isn't even showing my DVD/CD recorder, only showing Drive A: 3.5 Floppy. It started when I downloaded (I think) WindowsBlinds, just wanted to do some color changes. Well when I installed it, Norton came up with a Trojan. Norton Quarantined or deleted it and said no more further actions required. The install finished (windowblinds) and I tried a couple different skins and decided to uninstall it. Uninstalled with Revo Uninstaller
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Nov 27, 2006
usually whenever i run programs the shortcuts would be left on my start menu. so say after running several programs, like for example, adobe audition, divx player and ccleaner, on the start menu would appear the programs which had just been recently run.if i right click the start menu and go to customize, i can select the number or programs to be displayed on my start menu.so yup, usually the recently run programs would display but then it disappears like it emptied itself from the menu.so my question being is, whats up with my start menu and why does the recently run programs list keep disappearing.
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