Hi......both my CD drives dont work. I have a cd rom drive (D) and a cd rw drive (E). Neither of them read any type of disc, whether it be data, music, photos etc, and i have tried these disc in another pc and they work fine. I am using OS windows xp. I have been down all the routes of device manager and it says everything is working. I have uninstalled the drives and then restarted my pc, and windows automatically detected them and installed them. I have also done a system restore and ran the troubleshooter. None of these helped. Please help me as I cannot even backup my pc. Thanks.

Hi......both my CD drives dont work. I have a cd rom drive (D) and a cd rw drive (E). Neither of them read any type of disc, whether it be data, music, photos etc, and i have tried these disc in another pc and they work fine. I am using OS windows xp. I have been down all the routes of device manager and it says everything is working. I have uninstalled the drives and then restarted my pc, and windows automatically detected them and installed them. I have also done a system restore and ran the troubleshooter. None of these helped. Please help me as I cannot even backup my pc. Thanks.

ok so you've been through the 'software' side of the fence here. now to look at the hardware side. i have to ask though - are these drives running with their correct drivers and not the ones that microsoft provided. firstly try installing the correct software drivers for each drive and see if it they work.
Also check BIOS to see if the drives are recognised there properly. dont always rely on device manager for answers. If not then uninstall the drivers fully and completely shut down the PC and unplug it.
This next bit could be a little tricky for those not familiar with the insides of a PC.
1. open the case and locate your cd drives and their respective cables.
2. ensure the cables are properly and securely inserted into the backs of each drive and into the motherboard.
3. close the case and boot firstly into BIOS - check here to see if your drives are recognised in the boot order. if ok boot into windows and enter device manager. click scan for hardware changes and note what the devices show up as. dont worry about drivers install unless it specifically prompts you to. the main issue here is to get your drives working. insert a cd into drive 1 and see if it will play and do the same with drive two. hopefully all being well they should function properly. dont worry about closing device manager as if the drives dont work you might need it again. i say this because you might need to reassign IRQs.

if none of this works then unfortunately you will have to reopen your case and test both the drives and the cables in another machine. this will mean swapping out one drive at a time and seeing if it works in the other machine and reads disks with no quibble. rule out by simplification is the key:confused:

hope i've shed some light here

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