Hi all, I wonder if anyone can help me with an issue I am having?

I have 2 dvd drives installed in a system running XP and the only time either of them recognises that there is a disk in is when the disk is in the drive before booting up.

There are no problems reading the disks once it knows they are there it's just seeing it in the first place - having to reboot everytime I want to put in a different disk is a pain...please help?

Hey Tealtrader,

Welcome to PCHF, we have a terrific team of techs here, and I know we can help you to sort this out. That sounds terribly frustrating, but before we begin troubleshooting, I have a few questions to clarify the situation.

Has your computer always done this?
Did it happen all at once or did it happen over a period of time getting worse until getting to the current state?
Have both of the drives always been a part of the computer?
Have you checked your Device Manager to see if the drives are at least appearing to be running correctly?
Have you noticed anything else behaving strangely?
Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drives?

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Hi Ladygreenwitch, thanks for the welcome.

To answer you questions,

No it hasn't always done it.
I happened straight away about 6 months ago.
Both drives were installed 2 months ago as I thought the old ones were the problem.
Device manager says both are working fine.
It is the same for all of my USB ports as well, if it's attached before boot up PC sees it, if I plug in when the PC is already running it can't see it.
I have uninstalled and reinstalled both drives and updated the firmware - both drivers it says are the default windows one.

One of the tech support people I have spoken to suggested that it might be something to do with one of the windows updates, but I didn't fancy unistalling all of them and reinstalling one at a time in case there is a simpler option to try first.

Hope this helps

Any suggestions gratefully received

TT

Hey Teal,

Let's go for the easy and obvious first, in case one of the updates did cause a conflict or corruption of a system file. Please put your Windows CD in the drvie and reboot. Cancel out of any attempt to start the install process and allow the PC to boot up normally. Please click on Start, Run, and type in sfc /scannow exactly as written, then hit Enter.

This will run a utility that looks for damaged or missing system files and replaces them. It is a good place to start troubleshooting. Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Lady,

You are a genius, everything is working perfectly now.

Thanks very much for the help,

TT

Nice work ladygreenwitch!

tealtrader, glad to hear your problem is fixed.

Marked Fixed.