CD drive disappeared.

[graham01]

Windows XP is suddenly unable to initialize my CD drive. This is a generic CD-R/RW RW7200A. I used the dang thing last a couple of days ago and now XP says it cannot initialize the driver.

Trying to update the driver doesn't work because windows can't get the driver from the CD, duh! Tried downloading a driver from Ricoh supposed toceover this drive but that was no help.

Anyone have an idea on where I go from here? Is it time to buy a new drive?

Graham

[Sterling_Aug]

Try deleting the CD ROM from devive manager, then remove the drive from the PC and reboot. Let Windows boot to the desktop.

Shutdown and reinstall the CDROM and boot again. See if it loads the old drivers or does it let you install the new downloaded drivers.

[graham01]

OK did the delete, shut down, remove, boot, shut down, replace, boot cycle. Windows just boots to old drivers. Msg: Windows is unable to initialize the driver (code 37).

It still won't take the new drivers. That's an exe type auto-install which just report it can't put drive in "up mode".

Still no CD.

Graham

[graham01]

I was fairly convinced that this was a hardware problem - until I set up a Nero Image drive and that also did not install due to the same Code 37 error.

Some more googling did show a few people who were having similar problems with CD drives disappearing, data unreadable etc. all running SP2.

No good solutions out there yet except to very specific problems if specific software is deleted.

Restored my system back a couple of weeks and fixed the problem. Since that date I had burned a CD and installed a couple of programs - no idea which of those caused the problem.

Messy one,

Graham