Vanishing CD drives in XP Home

  • Thread starter Thread starter Julian Richards
  • Start date Start date
J

Julian Richards

I set up XP on my computer and everything worked fine. Then following
a reboot the CD and DVD/CDRW drives are no longer available in XP even
though they are fine during booting up. In device manager they are
there with an exclamation mark with the message

"Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but
cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)"

This has now happened twice. The first time it was cured by a fresh
installation of XP but as you imagine, by now such a task will be a
dreadful job with no way of stopping it happening again.

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drives has no effect. Can anyone
help? This one is driving me crazy!
--

Julian Richards

XP Home
L7S7A2 motherboard
1 GB RAM
10 GB + 80 GB HDs
CD+DVD/CDRW drives
 
I set up XP on my computer and everything worked fine. Then following
a reboot the CD and DVD/CDRW drives are no longer available in XP even
though they are fine during booting up. In device manager they are
there with an exclamation mark with the message

"Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but
cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)"

This has now happened twice. The first time it was cured by a fresh
installation of XP but as you imagine, by now such a task will be a
dreadful job with no way of stopping it happening again.

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drives has no effect. Can anyone
help? This one is driving me crazy!
--

Julian Richards

XP Home
L7S7A2 motherboard
1 GB RAM
10 GB + 80 GB HDs
CD+DVD/CDRW drives
Click to expand...


Hi,
sounds weird. Like the cables is screwy or something?. How do you have the
optical disks arranged, like Primary master. secondary slave etc?. Are the
drives old (or the motherboard). I haven't used WinXP Home (only Pro) but I
didn't hear of anything like this really?
 
Hi,
sounds weird. Like the cables is screwy or something?. How do you have the
optical disks arranged, like Primary master. secondary slave etc?. Are the
drives old (or the motherboard). I haven't used WinXP Home (only Pro) but I
didn't hear of anything like this really?
Click to expand...

It is indeed weird. I've had the CDs as slaves to the HDs and now they
are together on the secondary channel. It makes no difference. The
motherboard is new but both CD drives are now regarded as obsolete by
their manufacturers (doesn't say much though). It seems that during
one reboot both of them went bad in XP, even though they seem fully
operational during bootup even now.

Both use the standard XP drivers. Is it possible that they are
misrecognised as similar drives by XP? My OEM XP has SP1 on the disk.
If I try the repair function by booting the CD (the only way for me to
use it at present of course!) it asks for "asmes" from the SP1 disk.
If I could run the repair then I might get the drives to restart.





--

Julian Richards

"My son has asked for a pair of Nike trainers.
He's ten years old, he should make his own"

"I bought a CD of whale music. Imagine my
disappointment when I got home to discover
that it was actual a cover version by a tribute
band of dolphins"
 
Hi,
sounds weird. Like the cables is screwy or something?. How do you have the
optical disks arranged, like Primary master. secondary slave etc?. Are the
drives old (or the motherboard). I haven't used WinXP Home (only Pro) but I
didn't hear of anything like this really?
Click to expand...

The thought has just struck me. Virus. I've been plagued by Swen.A. It
has got on my machine and I've had to clear it off. Could it have done
any damage to the OS in hiding away? The reinstallation of XP would
fix it but reinfection would cause a relapse. I'm running out of
alternatives.



--

Julian Richards

"My son has asked for a pair of Nike trainers.
He's ten years old, he should make his own"

"I bought a CD of whale music. Imagine my
disappointment when I got home to discover
that it was actual a cover version by a tribute
band of dolphins"
 
It is indeed weird. I've had the CDs as slaves to the HDs and now
they are together on the secondary channel. It makes no difference.
The motherboard is new but both CD drives are now regarded as
obsolete by their manufacturers (doesn't say much though). It
seems that during one reboot both of them went bad in XP, even
though they seem fully operational during bootup even now.
Click to expand...
Both use the standard XP drivers. Is it possible that
they are misrecognised as similar drives by XP?
Click to expand...

Nope, XP doesnt do anything special with specific drives.

What have you done about the drivers for the motherboard IDE channels ?
Have you just used what XP decides to use during the install ? If you have,
try installing the drivers off the CD that comes with the motherboard.
 
Hi,
sounds weird. Like the cables is screwy or something?. How do you have the
optical disks arranged, like Primary master. secondary slave etc?. Are the
drives old (or the motherboard). I haven't used WinXP Home (only Pro) but I
didn't hear of anything like this really?
Click to expand...

It's fixed. To quote Blackadder, I'm like "a Frenchman who has
invented a pair of self-removing trousers". I installed XP on my C
drive with the CD burning software still on the D. This caused the
problem. The solution was courtesy of www.aumha.org



--

Julian Richards

"My son has asked for a pair of Nike trainers.
He's ten years old, he should make his own"

"I bought a CD of whale music. Imagine my
disappointment when I got home to discover
that it was actual a cover version by a tribute
band of dolphins"
 
It is indeed weird. I've had the CDs as slaves to the HDs and now they
are together on the secondary channel. It makes no difference. The
motherboard is new but both CD drives are now regarded as obsolete by
their manufacturers (doesn't say much though). It seems that during
one reboot both of them went bad in XP, even though they seem fully
operational during bootup even now.
Click to expand...

It sounds like the two drives in question ar eon the same
channel/cable.
Is this right?
If so, try changing the drives to another channel, and see if that
makes a difference.
Maybe that cable is bad?
 
The thought has just struck me.
Click to expand...

I'd strike back if it was me.
Virus. I've been plagued by Swen.A. It has got on my machine
and I've had to clear it off. Could it have done any damage to
the OS in hiding away? The reinstallation of XP would fix it
Click to expand...

Yes, it would be worth trying, particularly if you can ghost the
current installation, try a clean reinstall of XP, see if that fixes
the problem, and ghost the original installation back if it doesnt.
but reinfection would cause a relapse.
Click to expand...

Easy to avoid by ensuring that you have XP updated so it cant get reinfected.
I'm running out of alternatives.
Click to expand...

Nope.
 
I set up XP on my computer and everything worked fine. Then following
a reboot the CD and DVD/CDRW drives are no longer available in XP even
though they are fine during booting up. In device manager they are
there with an exclamation mark with the message

"Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but
cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)"

This has now happened twice. The first time it was cured by a fresh
installation of XP but as you imagine, by now such a task will be a
dreadful job with no way of stopping it happening again.

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drives has no effect. Can anyone
help? This one is driving me crazy!
Click to expand...

If you boot with a Win98 startup diskette with CDROM support are the
drives found? If not, is a HARDWARE problem, not XP. Check data cables,
power connectors etc.

Mike.
 
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