drive not accessible

  • Thread starter Thread starter Me
  • Start date Start date
M

Me

Hi

My daughter's computer has hit a problem. It has a DVD drive that has been
working quite happily, but suddenly, trying to select it in Windows Explorer
gives a "Drive not accessible" message.

It is shown in device manager as "Device working properly"

Is this a dead drive?

She's 250 miles away so I can't easily try the drive in another computer.
 
Me said:
Hi

My daughter's computer has hit a problem. It has a DVD drive that has been
working quite happily, but suddenly, trying to select it in Windows
Explorer gives a "Drive not accessible" message.

It is shown in device manager as "Device working properly"

Is this a dead drive?

She's 250 miles away so I can't easily try the drive in another computer.
Click to expand...
Are you sure she is not looking at a shortcut to the drive? They can get
broken. I don't know what operating system she is using, but go to My
Computer and try to access the drive from there.
 
Hi

My daughter's computer has hit a problem. It has a DVD drive that has been
working quite happily, but suddenly, trying to select it in Windows Explorer
gives a "Drive not accessible" message.

It is shown in device manager as "Device working properly"

Is this a dead drive?

She's 250 miles away so I can't easily try the drive in another computer.
Click to expand...

Had anything changed on the system?

Perhaps a silly quesiton, but is there a disc in the drive
with data on it? That is necessary to avoid the "Drive Not
Accessible" message.

If there's a disc in, try another known good disc, perhaps a
pressed (retail distributed) CD would have a better chance
of being read by a marginal drive. Early to late '90s DVD
drives often had problems reading CDRs, espeically those
with > 650MB capacity. Such a drive aging or getting
dust/dirt on the lens would only make matters worse.

If she can boot system to DOS, loading CDROM driver (like
with a WIndows 98 startup disk or Windows OS Instalation
disc, it would reveal if drive works outside of windows,
assuming the drive can use a semi-generic DOS driver which
most can.

If the system had been opened recently (or even if not) it
might be good to check that cables are fully inserted in
drive and motherboard, though is she's not experienced in
dealing with the interior of a PC this might be the last
thing to try, since it introduces the potential for
upsetting even more components.
 
Errr I did say she had tried to look at the disk in Windows Explorer, so no,
no shortcuts involved. Thanks for replying anyway.
 
Make sure there's a disc in it.Sorry for the obvious,but I had a friend who
freaked when this message showed up. It happened when they were trying to open
a CD Drive with no disc.
 
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