CD drives not recognised

[sketchy]

I hope somebody can help.

When I start up my PC, it has for the past few days taken over 5 minutes to boot up, then when Windows (98) finally starts the PC doesn't recognise my two CD drives (DVD ROM & CDRW).

I've checked the power cables are connected properly but still no joy. I have run an online virus scan and it hasn't found anything dodgy. So I am clueless, is it a BIOS problem?

I hope someone can help,

Sketchy

[BipolarBill]

Welcome to SysOpt!

It's a good idea to mention your OS when asking for help. Motherboard info would be nice too.

If you recently visited Windows Update and picked up an "HDC update" (hard drive controller), this could be the result.

At any rate, the first thing to do would be to download and apply the chipset drivers for your motherboard.

[Mafiosy]

What did you do so that problem occured?? Have you changed the configuration ???

[Rugor]

Ok this is going to sound odd, but do you have a CD in either or both drives?

The reason I am asking is because of what happened to me the other day. I was going to play a game, clicked on the desktop icon and got an error message that I couldn't play it because my system had no CDROM drive which the game required. I was surprised because I have a CDROM and in fact the game CD was in it.

It turned out that the system would only recognize the presence of the CDROM drive if it was empty. Otherwise it would take a very long time to boot and CDROM drive would not show up.

I fixed it by removing the CDROM Drive, disassembling it and making sure the lens was clean. I know this is a drastic solution, and not one I would suggest to someone who doesn't know what they're doing, but it worked for me.

[rangeral]

Before the trying the drastic route get a can of air and blow out the insides while the tray is open. Have you run scandisk yet?

[Rugor]

I would have gone the can of air route too, but I didn't have one and did have a screwdriver.

Luck

[Rainsford1]

Is it possible that the IDE cables may have come loose from their fittings? I've seen this happen on more than a couple of occassions on machines that are somewhat old. It seems that the slight vibrations can work loose a connection that was made properly to start.

[Duke523]

When I was runing Win98 SE when I would change a componet like a cd drive, it would not reconize them, I usaly just reinstalled the OS. But you can find the drvier for it and manually install it to get it to work. Check if there are any conflects with other hardwhare. Check your settings such as DMA or Sync(which should not be checked) in the properties. If the divce does not show up in your system, you need to install the drivers, but for the CDRW most of them don't have drivers, they use firmwhare which is not good if it is not detecting it. GOOD LUCK!!!