Bios won't detect cd-rom drive but XP will?

OK....so in Windows XP, you can read files fine from your CD player. Also, when you go into device manger, is it listing your CD-Rom drive?

If all of these are happening, then your BIOS is recognizing your drive. There is no way for Windows to access your CD-Drive if your BIOS doesn't recognize it.

One more thing....when your system is posting, and it is listing all of the master, secondary, etc... drives....do you see your CD-ROM listed?

When I go into the device manager I can see the cd rom drive

Hi, welcome to this site
remember we are working blind so bare with us
to help others reply to your question
if you haven't mentioned it yet:
- what model of computer
- what os, XPpro or home
- how old is it

two things one can do here
- restore to system back to a date prior to the problem
- repair with xp cd

try repair first
http://www.geekstogo...ws-XP-t138.html

Edited by fleamailman, 30 October 2006 - 06:11 PM.

Go to http://www.powerspec.com and under the "Support Specs" search box, type in 9261 and enter, that's what I have.

I am not too sure as to how old it is, I would say 4 years though, In it's lifetime all I had to replace was it's hard drive.

two things one can do here
- restore to system back to a date prior to the problem
- repair with xp cd

try repair first
[url="http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Repair-Windows-XP-t138.html""]http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Repair-Wind...t138.html"[/url]


^^ Please be aware that my system restore has never worked and I have a restore cd and that's what I'm trying to do, I'm trying to restore my computer!!! However my bios isn't detecting the cd-rom drive at start, but windows can read and write with the cd-rom drive.

So it is listed in the Device Manager but the hard disks have never been mentioned are mentioned in the post info on bootup, or at least I think, the only thing it gives and has always given was the processor, rom, keyboard and somebody "B legacy" which the screen is only partially shown on my monitor, I never knew why. It also says "Dual Channgel paging mode" which I have no idea what that means,.

Edited by Neodude103, 30 October 2006 - 06:17 PM.

thanks for the details, very clear, helps to know the age sometimes the comp is still under warrenty

no, not the restore cd, one needs a copy of XPpro cd to do a repair, listen forget the cd rom problem for a moment, I think you have a trojan so I am passing you to security here
http://www.geekstogo..._Log-t2852.html

Edited by fleamailman, 30 October 2006 - 06:22 PM.

Since my Windows Xp Machine thinks it is a Windows 98 machine, System Restore comes up with a blank Screen, so does the Windows Update page.

Do you think resetting Bios could solve this problem?

I don't have a trojan, I have scanned my computer and rescanned my computer, I have also posted a Hijack log before, all with nothing suspicious. A trojan wouldn't stop your Bios from reading your cd-rom drive but allow your OS to read your cd-rom

And I don't have an XP CD, but really, that makes ABSOLUTELY no difference, as this will have the same effect, second this whole thing is surrounding me trying to restore my computer but I can't because the bios won't read the cdrom drive.

I made another Hijackthis log post though:
http://www.geekstogo...howtopic=136584

Edited by Neodude103, 30 October 2006 - 06:28 PM.

I did fix it, I made the drive a slave drive. It was working before because there is another cd-rom drive that was set as slave, however it appears to have lost power, for the longest time I haven't been able to turn it on, litterally. I've tried changing the cords it is plugged into, all without any success. Any guesses?

OK...I have been doing some reading and I found out that its possible for your BIOS to not list/read your CD-ROM but still have Windows recognize it and use it.

"The CD-ROM is controlled entirely by the software driver. So in short, it doesn't really matter much if the CD-ROM is detected in the BIOS or not."

I got that from a couple of different sites. Even after reading that, I still think its weird that your BIOS is not "recognizing" your drive. Well, at least it wasn't....I just saw that you might have fixed that problem. So does your BIOS now see a CD drive?

I did fix the problem, I have two drives

The one I lost power to was set as Slave
The one I still had was set to Master

Now since the one set to Slave stopped working, Bios stopped recognizing the drive, but XP didn't.

A simple switch of the slave/Master had the Bios recognizing the drive again.

I have tried everything to get my other cd-rom drive to work but it doesn't want to budge, I would suspect that it's dead.

Thanks for all your help wmerideth, I hope you learned some stuff in the process.

Edited by Neodude103, 30 October 2006 - 08:10 PM.

hi guys, good day. i have the same problem but the other way around. bios detects my cd-rom drives but i cant see it when i open my computer. i tried connecting my hard drive to ide2 and it wont read my hardrive. so is there a possibility that my ide2 is jammed? but how come it detects in bios? i appreciate your any help. thanx

OK....little more info about your system would be great. Also, how many drives do you have connected to your IDE connections?

my harddrive is connected to ide1 primary and both of my cd\dvd rom is connected to ide2. i tried looking into my device manager and my cd\dvd didnt apper there. my cd-rom would work if i connect it to my ide1 secondary. i have p4 2.66 system and running in win xp sp2.