XP no longer recognizes my CD/DVD devices

On 4/8, my system was just fine. On 4/9, I noticed that Windows had automatically downloaded and installed some security updates and rebooted the system overnight. When I logged in, I noticed that it no longer recognized my DVD-ROM or CD-RW drives. In Device Manager, it displays both drives with an exclamation mark in a yellow circle and, checking the properties of each device, the message is the same for both ( "Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41) "). All of my other peripheral devices are working just fine, as is my hard drive. It is only affecting the CD/DVD drives.

A little info about the drives: The DVD-ROM is connected to IDE (I can't remember whether it is on the primary IDE port with my hard drive or on the secondary IDE port by itself, but I am pretty sure it is on the secondary). The CD-RW is a SCSI device and is connected to a PCI SCSI card in the system. So, they are not even on the same line. I checked the BIOS and it recognizes the DVD-ROM just fine. The SCSI card recognizes the CD-RW drive just fine. When Windows XP comes up, it loads the drivers but does not see the hardware. In Device Manager, the SCSI card is just fine. Also, in Device Manager, I was able to uninstall each device (right-click on the device, click <Uninstall>) and then click on <Scan for Hardware Changes> and each device is located, but still with the error. I attempted to restore the OS to an earlier date to see if it was something in the updates that caused the problem, but the restoration was unsuccessful. I also uninstalled the updates, but that didn't help.

I am fairly confident that both devices are just fine, and it would be pretty coincidental for both to take a dump at the exact same time. I have not cracked the case open yet because I just don't think it is a hardware problem, but that will be my next step unless someone who may have seen this problem before can possibly give me some insight.

Thanks in advance!

 

Your system is seriously infected with viruses , you have only two ways , either use the latest antivirus software , or just format the system.

 

I'm running Norton, which is completely up to date, and it is not reporting any infection. So, either Norton is total ****, or it's not a virus problem. Yes, I could reformat and start all over, but I'd rather not have to do that because we all know how much fun that is. Anyone else have any other ideas as to what could be causing the issue???

 

Thanks, Pete! That did work to restore BOTH drives. However, I noticed that my CD Writer software (Roxio Easy CD Creator) did not recognize the CD-RW drive as a writer. So, I went to the Roxio web site and they also had a knowledgebase article on the problem (I should have looked there to begin with) including a fix. It appears to do the something similar to the link you gave me, but I think it puts specific values in the Upper and Lower Filters. Nevertheless, problem solved! Thanks again!