I would like to say I am pretty much computer illiterate....this oversized paperweight is making me believe that the only way to fix it would be to get out a very large hammer and beat it into submission!

With that said, I seem to be having troubles with both my disk drives. I have my regular one and a cd-writer...err burner I guess it would be called. I was told by someone that I may just need the drivers...I tried going onto a windows self help site and ended up getting nowhere...any thoughts on how to fix this?

The computer will read both the cds if I go into the start menu and then click on the different drives, however that is all they will do, the cds are acknowledged but thats it.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Seragilo

 

Ok, a little more information would be very helpful. What brand of computer is it,what operating system are you using, and were these drives installed when you got it, or did you or someone else put them in? Did they ever work, or did they just stop, or did you have a virus or something? What type of cd's are you trying to play, music, data? They both show up under "my computer"?

 

Whoops, sorry about that.

The computer was given to me by my father. Unfortunatly, most of the disks have gone by the wayside.... The computer has Windows XP and the drivers worked fine up until a month or so ago. The cd-writer still plays audio cds, I just found out...and every cd no matter the kind is read in the start menu. I have had a virus, I could not tell you what kind, but I am told by my virus scanner all is clear now....

Sorry for the lack of info!

Seragilo

 

What do you mean by "the drives are acknowledged"?

If you were to go into "My Computer" from the "Start" menu, can you click on the drives and see the files?

Err, I'm assuming you have WinXP.

 

Seragilo,

I think you may be confusing some readers with some of your terminology. Your use of the term disk drive may be misleading some people. In general, drives where you read and possibly burn CDs are refered to as CD drives, not disk drives. The term disk drive is generally used to refer to a removable disk, such as a 3 and a half inch floppy disk. Sometimes a fixed disk, more commonly called a hard drive is refered to as a disk drive, but this too can mis lead some people. With that out of the way, on to your problem.

One of Windows biggest problems is that just about any program can modify or delete driver files. This is great when it comes to installing new software, as long as the installation goes okay, but if a problem developes or if a virus program gets in there then real problems can develop.

This corruption of system files is one reason that many people recommend reinstallation of the Windows operating system every so often. Every so often can be ahything from every few months to every year or even less often, depending on exactly how the system is used.

Sometimes a reinstallation becomes necessary. One such time might be when a virus has completely corrupted the hard drive. Another time might be when a system is just so slow and bogged down that nothing seems to work right.

One thing that you can try is to remove the CD drives and then let the operating system find them and reinstall them. I don't mean to physically remove the drives, but rather to logically remove them.

Go into the device manager and remove the CD drives. Then reboot the system. The operating system should find the new hardware and install them. In general, you won't need the windows XP CDs to install a CD drive, so I wouldn;t worry at this point about not having them available.

However, on the subject of Windows installation CDs. I do strongly recommend that you find them. Eventually you will need them. When you do need them is not the time to try to find them. When you need them you want to be able to put your hands on them right away. You don;t want to have to wait days or weeks while someone goes looking for them.