DVD/CD Drive Help

I'm having a bit of trouble with my DVD/CD drive. It doesn't seem to be reading disks. Under My Computer, the drive isn't listed, all I have there is my main C: drive and the recovery D: drive. It's not listed in the device manager, or anywhere that I can find.

My computer is an hp laptop with Windows XP installed, in case that's relevant.

I went to the hp help website and tried following the directions there. It had me going into system recovery and opening a box and searching the diskpartition volumes and giving the comman "dir" (direct?) to the drive that should be the disk drive. (Under that menu it always lists three drives, C:, X: (which is labeled as the recovery drive), and D:. The first time I did that, the drive came back under the My Computer menu and I was able to use DVDs for maybe a week and a half(ish). Then it disappeared again and I tried it again, and it came back again for maybe a half a week before disappearing again. And now upon doing the same process, it doesn't seem to have any effect at all.

I've also tried using system restore to restore to a previous point, but for some reason, every date I've selected from the restore menu says that it is unable to restore the computer and that nothing has been changed. I've checked and system restore is turned on and everything so I'm not entirely sure why it isn't working.

As far as I know, I don't have a virus, Norton and Spysweeper haven't shown anything on any scans I've performed.

If anyone could help out, It'd be great. I'm really hoping it's something that can be taken care of without having to either open the computer up or take it in for service. If you do know what's wrong, please try to be as detailed as possible with your response because I'm not incredibly computer literate.

Thank you for the help

What is the machines full model number?

DVD/CD

Is this one drive, or two?

Is it recognized in the machines bios?

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Location: Alberta, CanadaD-A-L Hardware Scan

Ok...

on the bottom of the computer, the p/n is labeled as: EZ415UA#ABA

and the s/n is CND62843ML

and it's an HP Pavilion dv5000

I believe (although I'm not 100% certain) that it is one drive. If there is any way to find out for certain, if you can tell me how to do that, I can let you know.

And as for the BIOS, like I said, I'm not too computer savvy so I'm not sure if I'm looking in the right place, but under boot order it had the following list:

1. USB Floppy
2. ATAPI CD/DVD ROM Drive
3. Notebook Hard Drive
4. USB Diskette on Key
5. USB Hard Drive
!6. Network Adaptor (I'm not sure why the exclamation mark was there, but it was there so I figured I should put it in)

so, It looks to me like the BIOS does have it listed (again not sure if that's in the right spot or not) and that it is one drive. Hope that helps make things a bit more clear. I'm certainly willing to help give any more information you might need in coming up with what's wrong.

Thanks again

According to this;

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...reg_R1002_USEN

you have one DVD reader/burner.

The boot order is "further" into the bios screens, and is just a setting for devices.

To see if the DVD is recognized as an available device, look in the "main" (first?) bios screen. Your hard disk, the date and time, floppy drives, etc will be listed there as recognized devices.

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It's a good day when you learn something
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Location: Alberta, CanadaD-A-L Hardware Scan

You're right, that link seems to be completely correct, so it looks like it is one device.

The "main" BIOS screen has the following infromation on it:

System Time
System Date
Notebook Model
System Board IP
Processor Type
Processor Speed
Total Memory
Video Memory
BIOS Version
Serial Number
UUIA Number



Am I in the right section now? It doesn't look like it's there to me, so I'm not sure.

The keys to use for navigating around in a bios program are always shown somewhere on every screen. The ESC key backs you out, screen by screen. If you make any changes, it will usually make you confirm the change by typing a Y or highlighting another choice and choosing it with either ENTER, or one of the F keys.

While you're in the bios, navigate through the various screens until you find your storage devices listed. It may look similar to one of the attached images below.

When you find your SATA or (E)IDE hard disk, you're in the right area.

Note the name of any screen you're in which refers to your LightScribe 8X DVD±R/RW, and what parameter or usage it's listed under. (If you find reference to it, the machine recognizes it.)

__________________
It's a good day when you learn something
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Location: Alberta, CanadaD-A-L Hardware Scan

Thanks for the pictures, that definitly helped let me know what I was looking for.

I found a place that refered to SATA Native Support, but the only options there were to enable (which it was I believe) or to disable it.

The BIOS screen looked similar, but I couldn't find an area where the masters and slaves were listed and what devices were alotted to which.

the tabs along the top were:

Main (I already said everything that was underneath this heading in a previous post but it might be important to say that only the date and time are editable?)

Security: Administration Password and Power-On Password

System Configuration: Language, Embedded WLAN Device Radio, SATA Native Support, and Boot Options

Diagnostic: Primary Hard disk Self Test

and the Exit menu


I seem to be able to navigate through the screens just fine, I think I'm just having trouble finding what you're describing. Thanks for being so patient with me.

Ok, I'm now certain that I've looked through every option in the BIOS screens and I can't find anywhere where it has the name of the drive or even any of the Masters or Slaves.

I did do the Primary Hard Disk Self Test and it said it passed but that was all.

I'm not entirely sure where to go from here. Any ideas?

OK, Download, install, and run Everest Home Edition on this machine. (Clean FreeWare) Once it's finished loading and running, click on the Report Wizard in the Menu Bar. Save all hardware related pages (the default) to a TEXT file in a location of your choice. (It will default the location to C:\Program Files\Lavalys\EVEREST Home Edition\Reports, unless you redirect it.)

Compress (zip) the text file and attach that zipped text document to your next posting. (When posting, click on Advanced, and just below the posting box you'll see "Additional Options", and within that, "Attach Files". Click on "Manage Attachments" and follow the prompts. Browse to the file and choose UPLOAD.)

__________________
It's a good day when you learn something
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Location: Alberta, CanadaD-A-L Hardware Scan

Ok, here we go. I wasn't sure what all you needed/wanted so I selected the "All" category for the report. It's kind of a big document, but I hope it has everything you need to know.

Hope I did everything correctly.