SillyDog701

[mostlycompilliterate]

I know this problem might sound like other posts but please hear me out (if there is another post dealing with this, please please please tell me...)
I have Windows XP. My CD-Rom and DVD-Rom/burner disappeared from 'My Computer'.
I looked in the device manager, but there was no longer any mention of any type of CD/DVD-Rom Drive of any kind. No trace was left that there had ever been 2 drives, so I couldn't uninstall them because the computer didn't detect them and there were no little error messages either.
I started Windows up in Set-up mode (i believe that's what it's called, i pressed F2 when the computer was booting up and a grey and white menu screen came up), and 2 'CD Readers' were identified. When i selected them, the names of the drives (ex. Sony DRU-530) were correct, so I assume this means that the problem lies in windows.
I tried to re-install windows through floppy boot-disks, but when it asked for the Windows CD it wouldn't take my XP-Upgrade disk. It kept asking for 'Windows XP Setup Service Pack 2 disk', which I don't have. Can anyone help me with this? I have tried everything I know, and it has been 2 months since the drives disappeared. Thank You!

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

[Don_HH2K]

Though you say that this is different, the situation sounds strikingly similar to what I've been hearing in earlier topics. You may benefit from trying [sdp=59917]these instructions[/sdp], as plenty of people have reported that this fixed a similar CD drive problem.

If that doesn't do anything, you may be able to trick XP into re-recognizing the drives by reversing their IDE jumper settings; that is, set whichever one is in Master mode to Slave mode and vice-versa, though you'd need to open up the computer to do that.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

[mostlycompilliterate]

I have tried that trick- that was the first message I looked at. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything There wasn't an error message of any kind when the drives disappered, but I tried deleting the upper/lower filter files as directed and it didn't work. The other message's people still had their drives located by Device Manager, didn't they? And it had the little yellow error message on them or something, right? Mine just don't exist, according to my computer
Both drives are jumpered to 'Cable Select' at the moment, so I don't know if setting one to Master or Slave will do anything, but I will try that.
What should I do if that doesn't work?
Oh, I forgot to say this, I think: I tried buying a brand new drive and installing it, but that didn't do anything.
My problem I think lies in Windows, but I can't re-install or repair anything because even if I get to the bios command-prompt area (I did once, but I was stuck from there) I don't know what to enter to make it fix itself. And, as I said at first, it refuses to re-install from my windows xp-upgrade disk through floppy-boot-disks.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)

[Don_HH2K]

Given that you bought another drive and found that it didn't work either, the problem most likely lies within XP's hardware recognition itself. The thing is, I've never heard of or encountered a problem like this.

Depending on what kind of computer you have (and most computers can do this), you may be able to boot directly from your XP CD (there's usually a setting for this in the BIOS setup). If you can't do that automatically by just putting the CD in and powering on the computer, you can boot via floppies. You mentioned before that Setup was looking for a SP2 disk -- you can download bootdisks for SP1 and the original version of XP from here.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060130 Donzilla/1.1PR1 (WML/1.3)

[mostlycompilliterate]

I tried to boot from the upgrade disk, but kept getting an error message (however, my original drive is old and only worked half of the time before any of this happened (i am only just learning about updating drivers and such), and I will try to boot it from my newer DVD/CD one).

Thank you so much for that link and your help, I will try those disks now.

UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)