CD Drives - D & E dissappeared

Installed another 256 MB memory chip. Had to stand on my head.. very tight, recessed, cramped location, with numerious wires crossing in front of rceiving memory chip location. Once installed, computer recognized additional memory when powered up, everything was fine. Loaded Aida32, memory was displaying correctly, so I loaded Photoshop to do some further flexing. That is when I noticed "power light" was "constant on" for CD burner drive "D ". Pushed tray button, no action. Pushed "E" drive for CD player, dead, no action. Loaded Explorer.... no D or E drive showing. Check "Device manager ", no optical drives listed. Shut computer back down, checked for loose connections, found a loose connection coming from "A" floppy going to "E ". Reseated, could not find any other obvious connection problems, powered up. Noticed sequencial power lights on/off for A, D, E drives during power up/program loads. When desktop displayed, no drive lights on. Push D and E tray buttons, responds correctly. Put in a CD in D, then E.... both times, lights go on intermediatly as if reading CD, but NO program interaction with computer. Again check "Explorer ", device manager, Aida32... No drive D or E displayed or recognized. It is liked they do not exist. My "assumption" I have more dislodged connection(s). But can't seem to locate them. Unfortunately there are spare plugs hanging in the general area, but they appear to be the other half for splitter configurations. Any ideas how to progress from here.... or reality says, keep searching, resetting and hope. TIA

 

There should be absolutely no connections between E: and your floppy. Are you sure that they aren't both coming from the power supply and just are entangled somewhere? The small power connector on the floppy (for a floppy B: which no one has) is similar to the sound-out connector on the CD-ROM, but I doubt they can connect together (at least they shouldn't!).

All I can suggest is to check your connections again. Go to your motherboard manufacturer's site and get a manual that will tell you how things should be connected when you first install the motherboard. Read it closely and check everything.

 

Hi Abraxas

You were right, another wire had popped off the mother board. There was a spaghetti load of wires in the immediate area of the chip, all recessed from open view. My builder lives 5 minutes from the house. Took it over, he spotted it immediately. All my CD drives are now showing.
Thanks.

 

Very good.

Believe it or not, if you look at those wires often enough, they actually begin to make sense