Foo - Computer question

I'm having a problem with my computer that has me at my wits end. I know a lot of you folks are computer gurus so I thought I might ask.

I'm running windows XP home edition. Both my cd and dvd drives don't appear in the "My Computer" screen. I've uninstalled and reinstalled these two drives multiple times. I've downloaded and installed the drivers from the manufacturer. In the control panel in the device manager screen it shows that these two drives are installed but they have the little yellow exclamation point next to them and when you look at the properties it says "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)"

At this point I just want to get one of the things working so I can run the system recovery CD.

Anyone have any ideas? Oh and Happy Thanksgiving by the way!

Are these standard drives? What size? and are they in the HCL (Hardward compatibility list)(the manufacturer drivers may not be signed have you check microsoft for their drivers, if there is any)? Also do you have somewhere to test the drives to make sure there is nothing wrong with them? Also do you have the jumpers set right defining them as master / slave. If you have them set on CS (cable select) define them exclusively just for troubleshooting purposes.

These are the drives that came installed on the computer. It is a sony VAIO and I downloaded the proper original drivers from sony and installed them. I do have audio recording software that still sees the drives so if I wanted to I could rip CD's. So the drives are not busted. I've tried resetting to the default BIOS (whatever that does) and running the discs on startup but windows just isn't running these drives and I know I'm going to be cussing through my turkey!

Restting the bios shouldn't have much of an affect on how windows sees the drives. I would try microsoft and look for a signed driver. Other than that I would do a fresh install and hope.But then again I am a big fan of doing clean installs of windows (xp) periodically.

check this out:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/howto/gettingstarted/guide/troubleshoot.asp

I burned exactly 3 calories doing this search...time for more pie

if you go into control panel->administrative options-> computer management-> expand the stoage tree if it isnt already->click on disk managament on the left. what do you see ?

Get a Mac.

Maelstrom, I too am a fan of keeping things clean and reinstalling frequently but I got lazy and haven't done so in the past 6 months or so.

DJBowen when I do what you said it shows the C and D drives and says they're healthy. It does not mention the two CD drives.

165 those troubleshooting sites haven't helped. I've looked at them already. I put the system recovery CD into the CD drive andrestart the computer and instead of setting up recovery or formatting the computer just plain doesn't acknowledge it's there at all

Temp1...Happy Thanksgiving!

i'm sorry instead of clicking disk management click on libraries and see if they are there

if not you need to right click on my computer go to properties->Hardware tab->device manager-> and look for the drives there should be no yellow exclamation points or red cross outs anywhere.

sorry i didnt read your post all the way, what kind of drives are they? brand i mean.

I would assume sony...

I say clean format. Sounds like XPis taking a dump and I hate trying to patch windows. Clean er up :)

The one is a Pioneer DVD-RW 105 and the other is an Asus cd-S400/a. How do I clean format it? All the software that came with the computer is on CD-Rom and I put them in the drive and restart and they don't do anything.

:O...that sucks. I suppose there is a full recovery disk? Should be the same idea. It 'should' install the basic xp and all basic drivers. Both those drives are fully compatible (ironically I have them both and have in the past run XP for network testing)

If you don't have that cd...well what I would tell you is breaking the law and I would also say get win2k ;)

That's what has my pants in such a bind. The Full Recovery CD is in the drive and I restart the computer and...nothing happens. It just starts up regular.

What is the boot order in the bios. Make sure it is set to CD first...

If it is make sure there is power to both drives and then make sure the IDE cable is working. What you may want to do is make the Asus drive a slave and put it on the primary controller. This sounds like a hardware problem not winxp.

It should say "Press any key to boot from cd" when your computer is restarted. When you set the bios to default it changes the bios, usually to c, a, CD...you want it to be CD, c, a :)

I also have to ask. In your bios is it even seeing the drives? (the computer not winxp. At this point the OS isn't in the debugging equation)

is it reading the drives in the bios, did you add a drive and they quit working

It is seeing to drives in the bios. The boot order is set so that the dvd comes first, the floppy comes next and then the hard drive. I didn't add or change the hardware in any way. Is there any way that a "noCDcrack" could mess the system up? I did get a game and run one of those cracks on it. Could that be messing it up? If so, how can I fix it?

No it should do anything. If it isn't asking you to boot from CD then there could be a problem. It 'sounds' like the vaio bios is proprietary which would mean you need a tech from sony to help.

NoCDCrack shouldn't do anything like this. Before windows starts (as I said above) you should simply get a "Press any key to boot from CD"

ARRRGGGHHHH!!! I got a new video game the other day. All I want to do is get drunk and blow $hit up and my CD Drive won't work. To top it all off I can't ride my bike because of rain/cold.