CD Rom Not reading.....

Hi,

i was playing GTA Vice city, when the game froze and so did my pc, so i restarted pc, and now my cd doesnt read any of my cds, can any1 give me a solution to this frustrating problem? thx in advance.

 

i uninstalled the driver and reconnected my ribbon cable and rebooted, and still it reads nothing.....and i cant find an updated driver for this Cd rom....HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8481B....if anyone has a solution to this plz let me know. thank you

 

Hi Dna2k3,

Try this:
"When you remove the drivers do not install others, reboot and let Windows see the hardware and install the drivers for it (I don't know of any CDRW drives that require manual installation of drivers, they should use the native Windows drivers). If that fails remove it in Device Manager (if it is there), shutdown, disconnect the data and power cables for the drive. Startup and do a full boot to Windows. Shutdown and reconnect the cables. Startup and see if Windows finds it (or try the Add New Hardware wizard). After that it may be that the BIOS is not seeing the drive when you will need to check the IDE setup in the BIOS settings (see the drive's user manual). You may possibly need to reinstall the IDE controller drivers. Lets us know how things go. "
A quote (of mine) from a recent CDRW question. A late model CDrom should be the same.

If it seems to be in the BIOS, you can check by looking at the Configuration Screen, which is the third screen after startup (if it goes too fast, tap the pause key, then Enter to go to the next screens). Another check, boot to a boot/startup floppy and see if you can access the drive (in DOS, change to the drive and use the dir command to see the files on the CD...and make sure they are not the files of a RAM drive of a Win98 startup disk) . Again, let us know if there seems to be a problem.

IDE controller drivers come with your motherboard drivers. Check the motherboard manufacturers website for updated drivers.

Matt
PS I will try and check if that drive might actually need manufacturers drivers installed, but I have not seen this for a long time.

 

Drivers do not seem to be required. It should use those supplied by Windows.

Matt

 

thx guys for replying, i already disconnected the plugs and replugged and i uninstalled the driver and rebooted and it found my hardware again, but the problem is it wont read any of the cds, it starts giving this weird screetching noise while reading and every like 10 secs the green light just blips, and i cant hear the cd-rom moving either, can i actually be a software issue ? or do i have to replace it?......and its a normal CD-ROM not CD-RW....so i'm kinda confused .

 

Dna2K3, I read the problem as the drive not showing up in Windows and I was a bit pressed for time, appologies.
CDrom and CDRW use the same Windows ASPI layer drivers, that's why the same troubleshooting can be used for both.

Still try this:
remove it in Device Manager, shutdown, disconnect the data and power cables for the drive. Startup and do a full boot to Windows. Shutdown and reconnect the cables. Startup and let Windows find and reinstall it.
and
See if a CD can be read from a boot/startup floppy.

The ultimate test would be to install it on another computer.

I am wondering if during the game you were playing the optical heads were knocked out of alignment. If they were, with the price of optical dives nowadays, you may as well get a new one.

Let us know how those tests go, I could try to find out if misaligned heads will give those symtoms.

Matt

 

"screetching noise "?

Dna2k3,

Certainly sounds mechanical, and if so a new drive is in order.

 

Sorry to hear of your problem.

I just replaced a drive for a user today. It's in a machine used to test software releases, and so is used to load the OS and software many times a week.

It worked fine yesterday, and didn't work at all today. The symptoms were similar - the drive was recognized by the mainboard and by the OS, but would not read any discs. The big clue was that the drive would not successfully read the disc when inserted (you know the routine, you put the disc in, the drive light flashes a bit, then the disc is available). When I took the machine out of the lab and put it in my cube, I could hear the laser sled move about as it tried to read the disc, but after a few seconds it stopped. It's a Plextor 52/24/52a, which is exactly one month out of warrantee (one of the first of it's kind, we're a cutting edge kind of company). Not a cheap device when new, or even by todays standards.

Check if it's under warrantee, if not, don't beat yourself over the head. Try it in a different machine, and if no go, buy a new one. Any device with moving parts is bound to fail sometime, maybe yours went a little early in it's life. Newegg.com usually has a good price on drives and has free fed-x saver shipping on many.

If you play a lot of games, you might be able to save wear and tear on your CD drive by making ISO images of your discs and mounting them with an ISO mounter, like Daemon Tools (free), which makes a virtual CD or DVD drive on your system. There are lots of pointers for how to do this on the Web. An added benefit is that the virtual drive is as fast or faster than a physical drive. Of course, you need a good bit of disk space to host your ISO's.

Let us know how it turns out.

 

thx for your replies, i tried it on another machine and it didnt work, so iam gonna buy another one i guess. thx again