David Matthew Baker Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Hi all and thanks for reading this. Our 'main' PC has lost it's DVD drives. Before back problems I tried uninstalling drivers & restarting PC. All this seemed to do was get the drivers flagged up as not working. Due to back haven't tried since then. Bro would like it fixed though. The problem is consistant for both the 2 drives in the system and also happens with the 360's USB HD DVD. None of them appear under 'my computer'. The PC is running Vista Ultimate 64bit. They all used to fully work. Thanks, DMB Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
baddad Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Hi DMB - haven't any 'Vista' specific ideas as I've not used it at all, but a couple of things might help... Drivers: Shouldn't need updating (unless it's a vista thing) - most DVD drives just install on standard Rom drivers and work fine. Have you got DMA acivated? I had a prob a while back where one of my DVD's was reading/burning really slowly, and it turned out to be DMA related - some piece of software or other had disabled it... You used to be able to enable/disable DMA through task manager in 98SE etc, but it got more complex from XP onward. If you can't work it out you should be able to find a walkthrough via google (I did, but didn't keep it - sorry!) Did you upgrade to vista, or was in preinstalled? If an upgrade, did the drives work after the upgrade or have they been down since you did it? Cables - could be a loose one if the drives are master/slave on the same channel... less likely if one is slaved to the hard-drive, but stranger things have happened (have you relocated the PC at all lately?). You mentioned your 360 HD not being found... is it finding other usb storage devices like memory sticks? Again, it could be a DMA thing - My external HD drive needs to have it 'enabled' or it slows it right down by disabling cache/direct write. The best 'clue' is if the hardware shows up in 'safely remove hardware' dialogue... if it doesn't, it's not write-direct enabled... Generally you seem far more savvy about this kind of stuff than me so you've probably tried all of the above, but thought I'd post JIC... If all else fails, and you have a 'system restore' disc, I guess saving all your files and stuff to another PC and starting again will at least indicate whether you've got a hardware problem or configuration problem. Bummer, i know, but... Nice to see you floating about again - hope you had a good xmas etc L&P BD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
David Matthew Baker Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Not checked DMA had forgotten about that. All other USB devices work fine. Drives all were working fine then all stopped working at the same time. I expect this means it is software. Have checked all the connections though. Vista seemed very stable till this happened. Built PC myself so would need reinstalling from scratch, was hopeing to avoid that. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mossgrove Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Is there a name for the noise topics make as they go zooming by above your head? Simon Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
baddad Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Dunno about you but with me it's a sort of repetitive 'lalalalalalala' (or the birdy song)! David - I know how nuts it would drive me, so i did a quick search on google and found you're far from alone with this problem... The first two 'hits' are below... the second contains a link to the official microsoft support site, but the article it relates to is temporarily unavailable... Hope you find a solution soon, but it does seem to be a known driver issue in vista, so at least that narrows it down a bit: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cf...&forumid=23 http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-...rive-vista.html L&P BD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pearl Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Is there a name for the noise topics make as they go zooming by above your head? Simon for me a simple "whoosh" suffices, I only read stuff like this to confirm my ignorance! Hope you get sorted David. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Clare63 Report post Posted December 29, 2007 for me a simple "whoosh" suffices, I only read stuff like this to confirm my ignorance! Hope you get sorted David. I am soooooooooooo glad I am not alone LOL Clare x x x Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mossgrove Report post Posted December 29, 2007 One way to confirm if it is software or not would be to attempt to boot from a bootable CD such as a Linux live distribution, if you have access to another PC download and burn an ISO image for UBUNTU and set your BIOS to boot from CD, insert the disc and see what happens. If all appears to be well while using Linux it is definitely a Vista issue. I once got around a similar issue (but not in Vista) by using the Windows 'Add New Hardware' wizard and asking windows to search for new hardware. Alternatively delete vista and install Linux instead Simon Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pearl Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Well you clearly know more than Clare & me! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Clare63 Report post Posted December 29, 2007 (edited) One way to confirm if it is software or not would be to attempt to boot from a bootable CD such as a Linux live distribution, if you have access to another PC download and burn an ISO image for UBUNTU and set your BIOS to boot from CD, insert the disc and see what happens. If all appears to be well while using Linux it is definitely a Vista issue. I once got around a similar issue (but not in Vista) by using the Windows 'Add New Hardware' wizard and asking windows to search for new hardware. Alternatively delete vista and install Linux instead Simon So its just you and me Pearl then !!!!!!! Blimin heck Pearl your fast !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Edited December 29, 2007 by Clare63 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mossgrove Report post Posted December 29, 2007 I think I may have 'outed' myself as a bit of a techie....... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Clare63 Report post Posted December 29, 2007 Yeah just a little.... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
David Matthew Baker Report post Posted December 29, 2007 I've a 750gb USB drive that when I first recieved I included a Ext2, Ext3 and Linux Swap File partition on. Never got around to putting Linux on it yet. Was planning on doing that so I had a way to recover files from a PC if it goes wrong. Comp can boot to USB. Which distro would you suggest? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
mossgrove Report post Posted December 30, 2007 I use Kubuntu as it boots from the live CD into a pretty functional desktop (it's the KDE version of Ubuntu) , but it sounds like this may be exactly what you need: http://flashlinux.org.uk/ as it is specifically designed to boot from a USB key. Simon Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
pearl Report post Posted December 30, 2007 I think I may have 'outed' myself as a bit of a techie....... Embrace your techieness, you are in good company! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Canopus Report post Posted December 30, 2007 Never overlook the BIOS when you have problems with the operating system failing to recognise drives. I have encountered numerous computers with incorrectly set (or more likely corrupted) BIOS settings for drives. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Tally Report post Posted December 31, 2007 Throw it out the window Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
David Matthew Baker Report post Posted December 31, 2007 Thanks all. Have the drives back now. The answer was in one of the posts BD found. I had to do a bit of registry editing before reinstalling the drivers. Part of the PC I don't play around with because I don't have a clue. May stop some programs working but just have to reinstall them if that is the case. Thanks again. All the best, David. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
baddad Report post Posted December 31, 2007 glad you got there... and hope the reg edit didn't swipe anything else L&P BD Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
David Matthew Baker Report post Posted December 31, 2007 Not something I'd generally play around in. Don't understand enough what everything does to risk it. As could easily reck the entire PC and force myself to have to reinstall everything from there. Certainly seems okay at the moment. Was just naughty and logged onto it. Didn't think my thanks post got through because the PSP ran out of memory. Can manage a couple of minutes but no more. About to go back downstairs to watch Robin Hood Prince of Thieves on DVD. Apparently it has become a tradition. Me and dad are normally out on New Years Eve. Would usually have headed up to Newcastle for fireworks but back isn't upto it. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites