Problem with cd drives.

[Jibak]

Very sorry if this is in the wrong forum, or has nothing to do with this site ect. lol.  To tell ya the truth I have no clue what this site is actually for, I have been reading it from time to time and it seems everytime someone asks a question about how to hack ect. you guys laugh at them lol.

Well anyways, here it goes.  I have 2 cd drives and a portable hard drive cradle and one day at the same time, all 3 just dissapeared from the My Computer icon, and they all stopped working.  As far as I know I'm pretty sure they still have power, the light on them still flashes, and they still open and close.  

To be exact this is what I have:
Sony DVD Reader
Liteonit CD Burner
Laser portable hardrive cradle

I have Windows Professional and I have done scans and I am pretty sure it's not a virus.

So far we have tried things like un-plugging each 1 at a time, just incase 1 of them may of been faulty and was stopping the other 2 from working somehow.  Also (this may have nothing to do with this) but we kept getting these blue error screens, just at any random time and many of them would be different.  The screen would be full of white font saying stuff like there has been an error, if this is the first time you have seen this problem restart your computer, if not then scan blah blah ect ect.  And down the bottom every time I had this screen there would be 'Dumping psychical memory:' and that would go from 0% to 100%...and once it reaches 100% it would restart the computer auto-matically, then it would all happen again.  

The reason I mentioned that blue error screen is because it seems since the cd drives have stopped working, that error screen has stopped showing so I think somehow it may be connected?

It would be awesome if I could get some advise on how to fix this, if not, laugh if you must lol  Thanks for your help.

[Cobra]

To start with try a different IDE Cable. I got blue screens before because my IDE Cable was fucked and only half assed doing its job.

So if you try a different cable. And CRITICAL! write down the ERROR msg that comes up on the blue screen. They will help you fix your problem "believe it or not windows is useful for something".

What OS is it anyway?

[Cobra]

On a side note. In defence of the whole "Not helping people to hack" thingy. Quite the oposite. We are always willing and happy to help, teach or direct people that want to learn hacking / IT Security. What we do have issues with is questions that are stupid .. Such as .. Hacking hotmail, school servers to change school records.. Basically questions that clearly say .... with flashing lights "I DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT COMPUTER SECURITY!!!!!"

The End.

[Jibak]

I see your point about not helping the people with the stupid questions, I apologize for saying all you guys do is mock other people.

I am using Windows XP Professional.

The blue screens have seemed to have stopped, but I might try doing what you suggested with the cable.

But that still kind of doesn't solve my problem with the CD Drives not showing in My Computer and them not working.  Like if it was just 1 of them that dissapeared and stopped working then that's understandable, but all 3 (2 cd drives and a portable hardrive cradle) all dissapeared and stopped workinng at the same time.

Any more advise would appreciated thank you.

(By the way this site is so cool, you guys seem to know absolutly everything to do with computers lol)

[Metgod]

Years of experience... and work as a team. A good team can accomplish just about anything.

As for the drives disappearing, I would say definitely try a different ide cable (as the first thing). If it can't communicate with the drive, it may seem like it's not there at all.

I also wonder what sort of error message you'd get in dos if you tried to access it from there. It might be useless (probably is in most senses), but maybe it can give you some insight into the problem (granted I haven't really used DOS in ages so I may be way off but...).

Troubleshooting is often a trial and error thing, so maybe try that (new cable) and then give more info.

[Cobra]

Also, if you go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management.

When that opens up you should have a menu on the left hand side. One of which will say "Disk Management"

Click on that and tell me if you can see your drives in there.

[Uneek]

One more thing... check the event log and look for errors in the system log pertaining to either the drives or the disk controller itself. Also try a DOS Boot Disk with CDROM Drivers on it to see if it's hardware or OS related (WinXP Specific... could be a fux0red registry). Things to start off with...

[Jibak]

Thanks for all your help guys.

It seemed that something was wrong with my IDE Cable, but got that changed and now its fine again

Thanks once again.

[Cobra]

Any time man!