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Drive Missing

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9 replies

by qpeabody

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I have been getting swamped with users emailing me about their cd-roms not showing up in windows. I've checked the BIOS, and in a few of the computers, it appears and in others it didn't. I checked and replaced some of the IDE cables and couple of the motherboards and still nothing. I've even update the BIOS on some. Is there anything more that I can try before I reinstall windows? Thanks

9 replies

by cg it

Try the uninstall/reinstall of the device before you hack the registry. Changing the registry can be tricky and one small error can muck up the entire O/S. As Microsoft says in every registry editing: "WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk"

by cg it

Another avenue to try is updating the firmware of the CD-ROM /DVD drive. Some older CD-ROMs / DVD's firmware are not compatible with XP and all that is necessary is a firmware update. Also, an answer depends upon whether the user is a Home User or a Network User. IF the users are network users, hiding removable mass storage devices like CD-ROMs /DVD's can be done via group policy. If the network admin has set this policy for security reasons, then a workaround isn't possible until the admin changes the policy.

by qpeabody

I've already tried the add new hardware or scan for hardware changes feature with no success.

by abailey101

I ran into this problem after upgrading to windows 2000. If you refer to the instructions in wcp's post i beleive the registry entry ended in 965 (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/Curretcontrolset/Control/Class/{4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-?????????965) Remove the lowerlifters and upperlifters entry

by cg it

this appears to be another one of those seemingly unanswerable questions some who post here love to post. I've seen CD-ROM / DVD / Firewire / USB hardware problems with W2K and XP during the initial releases. XP had a compatibility list of hardware which if said hardware was not on XP didn't like it. That usually revolved around drivers. Drivers for 2000 hardware didn't work on XP. With subsequent patches and service packs, vendor updated drivers and hardware mfg making their products XP compatible, these issues have slowly faded. Only when someone with an "older" machine who tries to upgrade to XP does this problem rear its ugly head. No one likes to trash equipment they paid a couple of thousand dollars only a few years ago just to be able to use the newest flavor of XP but that's just what they might have to do.

by qpeabody

Well, this is an older machine, between 5-7yrs old, but as I said earlier it's running W2K. These machines were imaged using Ghost 7.5 over 6 months ago, and this is the first problem I have had.

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