CD-RW and DVD-ROM drives dissappeared!

hiya,

a less computer-literate friend of mine has come to me with a problem that i can't fix, and i was hoping maybe you guys could help me!

he owns a fujitsu desktop computer, and attached he has one freecom classic series usb cd-rw drive, and he has an internal lg gdr8162B dvd-rom drive.

a little while ago, he was uninstalling f-secure antivirus software, and he also removed an arcsoft photo manipulation program. he was intending to switch to norton antivirus, but when he went to put the norton cd in the drive, he realised both his usb cd drive and his dvd-rom drive had dissappeared from my computer. he then had a look in device manager, and this is what he saw:

http://www.geocities.com/matt.bailey@btinternet.com/driver.JPG

they are in device manager but not in my computer. i presumed it was a driver error, but i cant find drivers for either device anywhere - i found the freecom classic series drivers, but they didnt work - windows said it couldnt find a better match for the hardware.

i'm at a bit of a loss! i hope someone has a better idea than me... firther details can be supplied on request, i know i havent given very much information.

thanks very much in advance!

matt

 

just a bit more info. in device manager, the device status reads:

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (code 39)

i looked on the microsoft site, and tried their solution. it didn't work. at a loss again!

 

As a first step, have the devices removed from device manager and reboot the computer. Windows should try to reinstall them. If asked for the drivers, point the program to the INF folder in the windows directory. That might take care of things.

 

Next step, if you have no luck, disconnect the USB drive so that you can get one drive up and working at a time.

I would check for updates for the IDE controller drivers, which are part of the motherboard/chipset drivers. If you find updates, uninstall the current IDE controller drivers and install the updates when you reboot (it may be automatically done by Windows if you have run the updated driver program).

Even without updated chipset drivers, uninstall/remove the IDE controllers, that may reset things.

Matt