CD Drive disappeared from My Computer

[Barney]

I have been struggling to turn on my Windows XP. Whenever I shut it down, it gets stuck on the DELL opening screen, and never moves to the Windows XP loading screen, and I have already tried using F2, F8, and F12 for startup menus, which don't appear either. I tried turning it off and on repeatedly and I have been able to get past the DELL screen occasionally, twice with F8 and once just waiting. I have left it on many nights with the monitor off so I don't have to turn it off and on again. A blue screen that said "beginning memory dump" with a counter has appeared twice, and each time the blue screen appears, I have to turn off and on the computer, and keep doing so until it finally gets past the DELL screen. I have the computer on right now for the third time. I haven't shut down the computer without a blue screen for about 3 or 4 months. 3 days ago I got the second blue screen, shut it down and turned it on, managed to get past the DELL screen pretty quickly, but instead of going straight to the login, it said it needed to scan the hard disk or something, which took a rather long time. After the scan, I loaded the log in, and clicked My Computer. I saw that now my CD drive was missing! I've had this problem in the past before the booting up problem happened and restarting the computer would bring the CD drive back all the time. But now I'm afraid to restart the computer in case I can't boot it back up again. I'm hoping that there's another way to bring the CD drive back without restarting the computer. I can't even find the drive in device manager. The strange thing is that when the drive goes missing, and I put a CD in the device, the autorun doesn't even work; the actual CD drive device blinks and works perfectly fine, but the computer doesn't acknowledge its existence.

 

[Elizabeth23]

First when the pc wants to run checkdisk it is because the volume is dirty and the only way to clear it is to run checkdisk, preferably with the /r parameter, if you are having problems then run checkdisk at least twice until no more errors are found and fixed, it would be better to run from the recovery console, but can be run from cmd prompt, go to start>run> type in cmd prompt and click ok, a command prompt box will open, and you will type in:

chkdsk c: /r and then press enter

notice the space between the k and c and also between the : and the /

it will tell you the the volume has to be locked and do you want to start on the next restart, type Y and press enter, the Y is for yes.

then restart,,checkdisk will run, it will be lengthy depending on the size of the drive and how fragmented it is. the percentages will fluctuate, this is normal, when done it will restart automatically and HOPEFULLY will boot to the desktop if it does then run chkdsk again. you can view the report by going to start>run> and typing in eventvwr.msc and clicking okay, this will bring up event viewer, click on the applications directory to open and on the right there will be an informational line labeled WINLOGON, open this and it will give a checkdisk report, if any errors have been found then definitely run again.

since you have shutdown repeatedly ungracefully the data on your drive could be very corrupted and it might be best to reinstall xp, however if the checkdisk report comes back with ANY amount of kb in the bad sectors then your drive is failing.

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in order to help with a blue screen error I need the info on the blue screen:

need any file listed, the stop error code no. and title such as unmountable boot volume , etc...
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once we can get you booting normally we can reinstall your cd drive.

 

[tienkhoanguyen]

Jesus Christ!

Also you last resort you could try reinstalling XP. I know on my end XP is highly vulnerable to port attacks. Even if you don't download anything just leaving the internet on can cause you to get attacks on your system. I always have a backup if I use the internet. The missing CD trick has happened on my system too along with other updates that XP has been doing in the background. Even with the automatic update off it happens if you use the internet at all for some time.

 

[Barney]

Reply to Elizabeth23

Elizabeth23, before I do anything involving restarting the computer, I want to know whether there is any way to bring back the CD drive on the My Computer list without shutting down the computer, if not I can try your suggestion.

 

[Elizabeth23]

1. Close all open programs
2. Click on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and press Enter
3. Click on the plus signs (+) next to the following folders:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Class/{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

4. This folder is the DVD/CD-ROM Drive Class Description in the registry. Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.

UpperFilters
LowerFilters
UpperFilters.bak
LowerFilters.bak

5. If any of the above keys shown in step 4 are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete
6. After deleting the keys, close the Registry Editor
7. Reboot your computer
8. Open My Computer and check to see if your CD or DVD drives have returned. You may also want to open Device Manager and verify that the yellow exclamation and error code on the CD or DVD drive is gone. Also, be sure to check under Computer to make sure the CD/DVD drive is visible.

above from here but it STILL will require a reboot, almost every fix will require a reboot to my knowledge

 

[Barney]

Could deleting those files cause any problems to the computer?

 

[Elizabeth23]

nope as any cd drive problem first suggests to get rid of those entries, my pc does not have them as I deleted them a long time ago.