CD burner not working - help.

Hi,

I have done a lot of looking around, and found out some troubleshooting steps
to take, but I can only tell you what happened.

Several months ago my CD-RW drive worked: it played CDs, CD-ROMs, and I could
burn CDs and rip them to the hard drive. Now I seem to be without a paddle,
because the CD-RW drive (which used to be designated E is no longer
recognized. By this I mean it doesn't show up on the My Computer list of
drives in Windows XP SP2.

The disk tray will open and close when I click the button, but I have yet to
have it work. All of the troubleshooting I have done has not helped. If you
could, please, lend me an oar to steer the canoe. I'd appreciate it. Thanks,

Smitty

"smitty101" <u37227@uwe> wrote in message news:77d6d86f806b3@uwe...
> Hi,
>
> I have done a lot of looking around, and found out some troubleshooting
> steps
> to take, but I can only tell you what happened.
>
> Several months ago my CD-RW drive worked: it played CDs, CD-ROMs, and I
> could
> burn CDs and rip them to the hard drive. Now I seem to be without a
> paddle,
> because the CD-RW drive (which used to be designated E is no longer
> recognized. By this I mean it doesn't show up on the My Computer list of
> drives in Windows XP SP2.
>
> The disk tray will open and close when I click the button, but I have yet
> to
> have it work. All of the troubleshooting I have done has not helped. If
> you
> could, please, lend me an oar to steer the canoe. I'd appreciate it.
> Thanks,
>
> Smitty
>

It could just be a bad IDE cable, but it could be the drive, the
motherboard, the motherboard drivers, or XP corrupted. You really need to
either try a borrowed drive in your PC, or put your drive in another PC to
eliminate/incriminate the drive. You could try unplugging the IDE, reboot,
power down, plug the IDE back in, reboot and let XP discover new hardware.

Several months ago my CD-RW drive worked: it played CDs, CD-ROMs, and I
could
burn CDs and rip them to the hard drive. Now I seem to be without a paddle,
because the CD-RW drive (which used to be designated E is no longer
recognized. By this I mean it doesn't show up on the My Computer list of
drives in Windows XP SP2...

You could consider replacing it with external USB CD-RW (or DVD-RW)
drive -these can be pretty cheap now, and you would not have to take lid off
computer.

Hu Ru wrote:
> Several months ago my CD-RW drive worked: it played CDs, CD-ROMs, and I
> could
> burn CDs and rip them to the hard drive. Now I seem to be without a paddle,
> because the CD-RW drive (which used to be designated E is no longer
> recognized. By this I mean it doesn't show up on the My Computer list of
> drives in Windows XP SP2...
>
> You could consider replacing it with external USB CD-RW (or DVD-RW)
> drive -these can be pretty cheap now, and you would not have to take lid off
> computer.
>
>
>
I would first make sure the bios is detecting the drive. If you have a
floppy drive, download a trial version of bootitng and make a floppy.
When you boot the floppy, cancel the installation and enter maintenance
mode. Click on partition work, bootitng will search for all installed
drives. If it doesn't see the cd drive then you can remove the cover and
check cables. You could even swap cables temporarily.
Dave Cohen

smitty101 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have done a lot of looking around, and found out some troubleshooting steps
> to take, but I can only tell you what happened.
>
> Several months ago my CD-RW drive worked: it played CDs, CD-ROMs, and I could
> burn CDs and rip them to the hard drive. Now I seem to be without a paddle,
> because the CD-RW drive (which used to be designated E is no longer
> recognized. By this I mean it doesn't show up on the My Computer list of
> drives in Windows XP SP2.
>
> The disk tray will open and close when I click the button, but I have yet to
> have it work. All of the troubleshooting I have done has not helped. If you
> could, please, lend me an oar to steer the canoe. I'd appreciate it. Thanks,
>
> Smitty
>
There are two cables connecting the drive to the computer: a small,
white power cable with separate insulated wires and a larger one on a
ribbon cable for data. Since the button works, the power cable is fine,
but you should try removing and reseating the data cable.

If that does not work, either the cable (with connector) or the drive
electronics package has gone bad. Since the odds favor the drive and
it's the easier to deal with, I recommend replacing the drive. If that
doesn't do it, you will need to hunt down a new cable and reconnect the
drive and whatever else you have on it. In that case, you'll have a
spare drive which, though older, is likely to be workable.

Mike
--
mrichter@cpl.net
http://www.mrichter.com/