CD Players And Re-installs
 

It looks like I'll have to to a windows wipe and re-installl. But the cd player won't work - won't even read a disk!

So I can't re-install Windows if it won't read the diskette.

Should I go out and buy another cd player? Or another computer?

What is the relationship between cd drivers and the hardware?

Could this be a software problem?

Am I asking too many questions?

I'll be out of commission for several hours, so don't feel slighted or anything if I don't answer this right away. I'll get back to you tomorrow.

Thanks

The best way to diagnose your cdrom failure is to physically uninstall it and then reinstall it. Just shut her down, pull the ide and ribbon out of the cdrom and reboot. Check your hardware profile as you may have to remove the cdrom from it. Then shut her down again and plug the ribbon back in. Boot her up and see if your system recognizes and reinstalls the cdrom. If it does, test it out and see if it reads.

I've had cdroms just stop working, but going through that process wakes them back up. But I'm the kind of guy who pulls secondary harddrives while the system is running.:D

Useless Warrior,
Thanks for your answer but I'm a little confused.

Ok, I shut off the computer and pull the ribbon out. Then reboot.

How do you checkl the hardware profile?
What is that?

I meant to say device manager. Are you using XP? I've been on XP so long I don't remember anything from other OS's. If you are on XP, right click on the My Computer icon, select Properties, click the Hardware tab, then click the Device Manager button. Right click on the offending device and select uninstall. That will do it. Then, as I said, shut down, plug the ribbon back in, start her up and see if she automatically installs the cdrom.

You can uninstall the cdrom from the device manager and reboot with out pulling the ribbon first if you'd like. That might do it. I've never been that lucky though.|sad|

Useless Warrior,
There have been some developments with that.

I found that the cd-player driver was corrupted, that the troubleshooter for it was disabled and won't work, that System Restore is corrupted, that the Windows Help page won't load, Outlook Express is corrupted.

So I called a small computer repair shop in the neighborhood and the guy told me it sounds like a variation of the Sasser worm. He said it gets into your system through IE - gets right past Norton; a lot of times it disables the cd player. He told me to bring it it today and he can fix it.

He also advised me not to use IE after it's fixed.

Wow! What a week1