CD-ROM and Floppy Drive not shown in Windows Explorer

Hi,

This type of problem occurred for the first time to my Windows XP SP2.
One day, after Windows has been loaded I didn't see CD-ROM and Floppy Drive in the Windows Explorer. Since then they are not being shown. Morover, in the Device Manager there are exclamation marks at: standard floppy disk controller, built-in infrared device, communication port (com1) and MPU-401 compatible midi device. Error messages read: "This device cannot start. (Code 10) "
I don't have an infrared device at all nor have I added any new hardware recently. What I did was revert the Windows registry to the time when everything ran fine, but this did not help.
I have a SATA HDD. In Bios (there is no new version of bios available) in the boot section, I had to disable floppy disk, because when enabled it resulted in "can't write ESCD ". The only device that is used to boot from is "other ata device ". I enabled "reset bios configuration data" but it did not help either.
I wanted to reinstall everything from scratch but I need to have floppy drive and CD-ROM drives available.
Please, help me.

 

As an addendum: CD-ROM drive cannot be seen in BIOS, in the Boot tab in BIOS there is only an option "none" and "disabled ", however when I push the button on the CD-ROM device it is opening its tray normally.

 

Since you mentioned that you're going to reinstall everything from scratch, you might try to restore the "default" BIOS, save and exit. Then after reboot, very likely you could see the CD/DVD drive's back. Good luck.

 

I also encountered the problem yesterday. It was the bug of Norton 360 version 2 Registry Cleanup, as they admitted. It needed their remote log-in to my PC and perform a fix for an hour. Besides, they also mentioned that Windows Vista's recovery point wouldn't work as Norton 360 uess dynamic configuration.l

My suggestion: Every PC should set in the BIOS multiple options for boot up. 1st being CD-ROM, 2nd being USB, then HDD. I'd ignore FDD.