CD Drive won't read discs

Hi, from what you tell us, the CD & DVD drives were also expiencing problems.

Let us know what happens next.

Martin

 

Well, I'm home and no joy. Floppy drive on my completely reformatted Alienware will not read the floppy. Called their technical support and they want to see what happens with a compact Flash; unfortunately none at home so have to try again tomorrow.

What is the best approach to try to recover the info on the compact flash and 3.5 floppies that read as Not formatted? Send them to a professional? The files are pretty important.

Not a good day.

 

Hey Johnwopus: What fixes did you try?

Martin

 

Attempted fixes: After I found out that the drive still didn't read (from the newly reformmated hard drive), I reinstalled the floppy disc controller per your (excellent!) directions, no change. I could not figure out how to look at the event viewer as there are no Administrative Tools on my start menu. I just loaded the chipset up from the CD that accompanied the computer yesterday; do you think that I should still try to get a new version from the web?

I am going to bring a compact flash home and try to see if I can repeat what I did before (load lots of programs, reboot 5-10 times) and see if it unformats the compact flash again.

I keep remembering this strange thing that happened before any of the problems occurred; my daughter had turned on the computer and said, "Mom, it's not loading ". I was in the other room and I thought that she was just not used to how this new computer starts up. But I came in and looked at the screen (the dark dos-like screen that shows before Windows loads) in time to see it saying something about "interview" and another file name that I thought I recognized as the name of one of my daughter's files on the compact flash disk. I asked her if those were names of her files and 16-year old like, she answered that she couldn't remember all the names of her files. The computer did load right after those two file names came on the screen. Now I am wondering, is that when the computer unformatted the flash disk? It somehow tried to start up with it and ruined it by doing so?

Maybe the A drives in the Alienware, my old HP and my daughter's boyfriend's computer were all ruined by one of the floppy disks with the novel on it (which was working fine the previous week?) and the compact flash problem is not a drive reading problem but instead the flash disk really was unformatted by some startup glitch, so the two problems are unrelated?

I will let you know the results of the compact flash experiment, I will have to do this after work. Thanks for hanging in there!

 

Hey Johnwompus: Sorry to hear your computer problems are as persistant as mine have been. But, I always have hope that the next tweak or the next driver load or the next fix will straighten it all out. And I found that if I keep after it, 95 times out of 100, there is a solution. So, don't surrender yet.

There are a couple of fixes in MSFTs knowledge base, I'll try to find them and send you the links.

Also, you have not told us, or maybe I missed it, but are you having CD problems as well? Could be a combination of things, I think the likelihood of a floppy data disc or compact flash card only containing data hosing a drive or program is pretty remote.

I'll get back to you as soon as I can, but anybody else on the board is welcome to chime in.

Martin

Edit: I forgot to tell you: To get to event viewer, right click "My Computer ", then click "Manage" on the drop down menu, that should open the management console, where you should see the "Event Viewer ", click that then "System" See if there are any relevant entries, any ATAPI entries with the red circle and X in the middle. If so, double click to open, then click the letter like icon which copies to the clipboard, then paste into your next response.

Martin

 

Here is the news from home, it is encouraging in one way: everything else seems to be working pretty well on the computer since I reformatted the hard disk, with the exception of the A drive. I brought another compact flash in from work, and the computer reads it, I can transfer the flash to the USB on my HP (Windows 98) and back, no problems. Also the CD drives (which had done weird things just before we reformatted) are working fine. I have loaded about 75% of the programs that I had on before, will try the rest this morning and see if they change anything.

I looked at the error messages, Whew! As I went back in time, there were about 50 normal messages and then a string of messages that went: 7035 normal, 7036 normal, 7023 error; repeated for at least 500, maybe 1,000 messages! Then normal for a long time then a cluster of 6 errors on 7011. How do I figure out what these mean?

The downside is that I lost some nice stuff since my reformat, that must have been extra software put on by the factory (like my scanner window had been much improved, but now is back to normal clunky). I also ran into some Windows glitches as I switched from user to user to user to user and then logged them off sequentially; it eventually did not let me log off. The techs at Alienware said this was due to interference from the antivirus program (Panda) and it has not recurred since I switched to AVG. All of the messages on the event manager were from after all these glitches occurred. There are still a couple of minor glitches with the sound, mouse etc.

So: computer seems to be running, either there was a virus previously that attacked ability to read all 4 drives (A, CD, DVD, and compact flash on USB) and somehow the A drive is permanently impaired or: the compact flash disk I had before was somehow really unformatted by the Alienware or made to appear so, one of the floppies ruined the A drive on both computers, and the CD and DVD weren't really going bonkers, I was just doing something wrong (their weirdness was noticed just as I put the Windows XP disk in before shutting off the computer to reformat; when I put the disk in one and pushed it in, and the other would push out and the computer say "insert disk ").

I will send another update after I load the last programs I had on before (Carmen Sandiego, Print shop, Zoo tycoon). Should I keep checking for error messages? Alienware wants to send me a new A drive; I was pushing to just send them the whole computer back to redo (it ran so sweetly those first 3 days!) but now I don't know, maybe it will be OK.

 

Hey Johnwopus: Glad to hear you are having some successes, Keep at it and you will tame that beast.

Suggestion for Event Viewer, System: Open it again, then right click it. It will enable the deletion of all entries. Delete them, you may if you want save the existing ones to a log file. I don't save them, maybe somebody (Like your Alienware tech) wants to look at old errors that no longer exist, I don't.

Then reboot, wait a couple of minutes till all hard drive activity ceases and look there again. The new error (red circle with x) entries will be the ones that have not been fixed yet. (XP fixes stuff on reboot) Right click or double click each different error message and then click properties. The window that opens will have a description of the error and a link (blue) to MSFT. Click it. That downloads any information about the error that MSFT has published plus instructions to fix if fixable, and sometimes additional links that take you to MSFT's knowledge base for more information and potential fixes for the error.

Going to be interesting to see if a new floppy drive fixes the problem. If it does, let us know, may be able to help recover files on discs.

Again, good luck, and keep posting.

Martin

 

Yay! We got the files off the compact flash! Our computer person here in the department at the University, Bill, did a stellar job... especially considering that the data retrieval company I contacted (Binary Biz, recommended by Total Recall) said they could not do it! The Flash would not even register on Bill's computer in Windows, but he got some kind of hint with an old DOS Norton program that something was still on it. Problem was that he could not access the flash from DOS; no driver! Then (as I understand it) he did a search and found something from Panasonic, that they created for their cameras but apparently has wide application in just these situations, that allowed access to the drive from DOS. He then ran the old DOS Norton utilities and found one small file that had been changed, that apparently was supposed to indicate that the flash was a DOS-based medium. Norton fixed it and BOOM! There were the files back, all 150 or so of them!

Question is, why did my new computer corrupt the Flash? There is a file on the Flash named "interview" (the name I saw on the computer screen at start up one time, before I found the Flash would no longer work), and in fact this file is one of three that we recovered that will not read. So at start up one time the computer must have gone into the Flash card and read some files and corrupted the dos identifier file. Virus? Antivirus software? Abnormal boot? It would sure be good to know so it doesn't happen again! No more storing data on the flash card, anyway!

Also, I brought in the floppies that had the original files, and that seem to be ruining every floppy drive we put them in...looks like there is something on one of the discs, you can see a ring around the disk when you pull back the cover, like a ridge on an old LP record. Bill put it in his drive and zzzzz zzzz zzzzz, now the drive will no longer read anything! He thinks it is some actual substance that got onto it and then was dragged around by the heads as the disk spins. So theory 2 from my previous post appears to be the correct one; it was a strangely simultaneous corruption of the flash disk by the computer and ruination of the A drive by the floppy (or vice versa), unfortunately with both media containing the same files!

Now to get the computer back to normal from its reformat... this I can handle, I think. Thank you for your support through my time of trouble, Martin! Now we know what to tell someone if the compact flash thing happens again, anyway. Bill says he has seen it one time before (another Windows XP), but that time his Windows recovery program would still recognize the disk. Again, it was corruption of one identifier type file and the disk could be read as normal. Onward and upward!

 

Hey Johnwopus: Sure sounds like you tamed the beast.

Sounds like you need to be more careful where you spill your coffee.

I had an experience with Floppy discs. A couple of years ago, my wife bought me a magnetic paper clip holder which I promptly put on my desk, right next to my Floppy disc storage box. Took a while to figure out why they couldn't be read anymore. Had a computer expert friend come over trying to figure it out and after a little while he asked me: "Do you have anything magnetic around here?" That's when the light dawned!

Don't forget to keep coming back to this board. Read through the posts, you're sure to learn something and maybe you can help someone else.

Also, I have gotten so much help here I kicked in the $20. to become a contributing member. To me the board is worth thousands. I would have felt guilty continuing to use it without trying to help support it and keep it going.

I don't know much about computers, but whatever I know, I learned 95% of it here.

Sound like a sales pitch? It is! Help keep the board going if you can, become a contributing member.

Martin

 

Martin: I am more than happy to become a contributing member, this is the best site I have found for discussions on the level that are both helpful to me and understandable! Will send check, somehow sending my credit card number to a site full of computer experts doesn't seem quite the right thing to do....

 

Well, Great Johnwopus, Hope your next post has "Contributing Member" above your profile.

There are some experts on this bbs, but mostly men and women (I was going to say Guys and Gals, but if I did, I'd hear about it from the ladies, Johanna for sure. ) just like me and you, bumbling along, trying to solve one computer problem at a time.

I've been a member for four years and a contributing member for the last two. The "experts" have not yet used my credit card, but I'm keeping my eye on them.



Martin