my my DVD drive and CD/RW drives have dissapeared.
They do not appear in the device manager, and im not even sure if they are showing up in bios. it does say CD-ROM and ATAPI Removeable.
I tried to make put them on secondary IDE, but it wasnt having that and did not appear to load.
someone told me to delete the IDE controller in the device manager, but it comes up with a warning, is it ok to do it?

Any ideas on how to get the cd/dvd drives working again, i cant figure it out.

DO NOT REMOVE YOUR IDE CONTROLLER JUST YET!

A question before I can help diagnose this...

Have you recently uninstalled any cd burning software such as Nero or Roxio?

ok.

i dont recall doing that, it may have been someone else though, so i cant be certain

Alright, what I'm about to tell you to do is somewhat dangerous. If you don't follow these instructions to a T, you can royally screw up your PC. Have you edited your registry before?

nope

im reading something now on the net about 'CMOS Utility Menu'
i honestly have never heard of that before, i just know how to get to bios by pressing F1.
do you know how to get to CMOS? because its sounds like it might help

i am trying to add hardware through the hardware wizard in control panels, but i cant see cd-rom drives or anything like that, at best its cd controllers, but i dont have the drivers to make them work without being able to run Windows 98 cd.

Microsoft system information, components, multimedia, cd-roms still says NO CD-ROM drive

This post has been edited by worcesteradam: Jul 13 2005, 09:04 AM

Your CMOS is what the PC uses to save the settings you change in the BIOS. What I'm about to have you do is in Windows itself.

REMEMBER: Follow these instructions EXACTLY as I enter them or you can cause MAJOR problems with your PC.

Start by going to Start>Run and typing regedit in the window that appears. Click ok.

In the left pane of the window that opens click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

Click the plus sign next to SYSTEM on the list that opens up, then the plus sign by CurrentControlSet, the the one by Control, then Class.

You should now have a large tree of folders opened up with the newest containing a bunch of folders whose names consist of various strings of letters and numbers inside {}.

Click on the first folder that starts with {4...

Now, while watching the pane on the right, hit the down key until the top line in the right pane says DVD/CD-ROM Drives.

In the pane on the right, do you see to entries that are labeled LowerFilters and UpperFilters?

Right, i clicked current control set, then control, then class.
control opened up a load of other folder options, but class only opens up one, {4D36E96A-E25.....
that folder opens up inot one folder only entitled 0000
i dont see the DVD/CD_ROM Drives?

Ok. Given that class is only showing one folder inside of it, I'm guessing that you worked down through HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG instead of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. Make sure you are in the right place.

Also, I should have been more clear about one thing. When you select the folder inside of class that begins {4..., don't click on the plus sign next to it actually click on the folder name.

Let me know what you find out.

thanx for helping btw.

i am in the right place, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.

i clicked on the folder name but i dont see anything
on the right it says (Default) (Value not set)

The rest of this problem was resolved over instant message...the text follows. It has been edited to look a bit cleaner.

worcesteradam - i reached the registry where it lists the DVD drive...there is a label called Lowerfilters but no label called Upperfilters

The_Sloth - ok...here's where this can get dangerous. what you need to do first is go to the file menu and click on export. you will need to select a location you can remember to save this piece of your registry...this way if something goes wrong we can get back to where we are right now

worcesteradam - ok..and export the entire registry?

The_Sloth - no, just the current branch...the entire registry could take hours to save

worcesteradam - done...next...

The_Sloth - ok, click on the words LowerFilters and press the delete key, select yes on the window that pops up

(side note: if there is a key titled UpperFilters, this needs to be deleted as well)

worcesteradam - done. now?

The_Sloth - now, close regedit, restart your computer and everything should be back to normal...instant message me when it reboots and let me know what happens

worcesteradam - ok..cool..just to add one thing...I didnt do anything to my system which should have caused this..do u think it could be a prob with my drive?

The_Sloth - its possible, but not likely...the only time i've seen this happen was when cd burning software was uninstalled and it left the key i had you delete out there. once the key is deleted the drives reappear...the steps you just took are roxio's solution to the problem

worcesteradam - ok!~see u in a couple of mins!

The_Sloth - ok...good luck



Edit #1: Unfortunately, this was not the solution that worcesteradam needed. This, however, is useful if you have just removed Roxio or Nero cd burning software. I will post the actual results to worcesteradam's problem once I complete troubleshooting with him on instant message.

Edit #2: When I refer to worcesteradam in this post, I am actually meaning the random person who IM'ed me on Yahoo! with a similar problem . Troubleshooting with worcesteradam will continue on here and I will post the final results of "Random Guy" ™ on here as well.

This post has been edited by The_Sloth: Jul 13 2005, 10:14 AM

sorry, i dont understand, there is no 'lower filter' or 'upper filter'
where should i be looking?

Ok...quick question...was that you I was just talking to on Yahoo IM? Or someone else?

err... not me.

we are talking windows 98 here right? not XP, i dont have that

I noticed you had 98 about halfway through my post about where to look in the registry. What I need you to do is take a screenshot of the regedit window and attach it to a message on here. What you do is maximize the regedit window then press ctrl and print screen at the same time. Next open MSPaint and press ctrl and v at the same time to paste into a new picture. Save the image somewhere you will remember and attach it in a reply to this post so I can see what you are seeing.

This post has been edited by The_Sloth: Jul 13 2005, 10:15 AM