a friend of mine has a computer and the computer is not recognizing any of the drives (cd-r/rw, dvd, floppy) what i mean by this is when you put a floppy disk in the drive and try to retreive a file it says these exact words a:\ is not accessible incorrect function it also says this when you try to save a file to floppy and we've tried it with numerous floppy disks so its not the disks when you place a cd in the cd drive or dvd drive it makes the sound like its reading the cd but nothing comes up on the screen then when you try to manully access whats on the cd by going to my computer > cd drive and double clicking on cd drive the screen that usually shows all programs files etc that are on a cd is blank and the same thing happens when a cd is put into the dvd rom drive my assessment of the situation is that the floppy drive has gone bad and needs replacing while the cd and dvd drive may just need new drivers but i could be way off center what could be the problem here
i had the same problem with my Uncles computer i worked on this weekend. I installed a new burner and next thing i know neither the burner or cd rom drive were working. I was getting the same error messages. I was tired of messing with it so i took it down to best buy. they went into the computer bios and changed the order with the Master Slave, and secondary slave (i think it's called). After that it worked fine. Not 100% sure exactly what the tech did, but sounds like the same thing.
but i have not installed any new hardware and i believe everything was working fine before but ill check just to be sure also i think somebody did a system restore could that mess anything dealing with the drives up
Do you have a bootable floppy or a cd that is bootable? That will tell you pretty quick if the problem is OS related, or if there is an actual problem with the drives. If it reads the bootable disk before you get into Windows, then obviously the drives are ok. When you look in the bios, do all of the drives show up? If not then it may be something as easy as having a cable loose or backwards.
been busy busy busy...it happens sometimes.. ok..let me get this straight At no time was the case cracked open before this happened? the only time I have seen something like this happen...where botht the floppy and one if the IDE channels weren't reading was after someone went messing around inside and accidently jogged loose the cables. f the case hasnt been opened recently...then you need to boot to the BIOS setup and see if it is detecting anything on the IDe channels. lets start from here.
yes.... then once you get to the setup screen...either look for IDE drive autodetect(or something to that effect) and if there isnt anything like that...just go to the first selection...which should be something about basic setup...or basic chipset ...it will be the screen where you set the time and drives.
here's the info rockets2k device configuration hard disk ide primary 0 40020 mb st340810a cd-rom ide secondary 0 compaq dvd-rom dvd-117 ide secondary 1 cdd4851 cd-r/rw diskette legacy diskette 0 3.5 1.44 mb boot order ide cd-rom drive first diskette drive (a) second hard drive (c) third it also has some things like ide dps self-test and storage options would those be helpful in anything looks like to me the computer is recognizing the drives i also put a floppy in the floppy drive and restarted the computer and the message nonsytem disk remove disk came up si it obviously read the floppy this is really confusing me i mean if the cables are loose or disconnected anyway on the inside the computer wouldnt read these would it
Do you have any bootable disks?(floppy,CD) I would be interested to know if it will boot from the cd/floppy sounds like it is now a Windows problem if you can boot from a floppy or a cd..
That's what it sounds like to me as well. Dookie...if you have a bootable copy of Windows on CD, just pop that in and see if setup starts.
do you mean a windows xp cd or boot disk (any version) i do have a xp pro disk and boot disk for 2000 what do i need to use
dude...read my post above. either one of those will work, since they are both bootable. just pop it in and see if setup starts.
Ooh ooh, I have a computer question...YES AGAIN! My cousin installed XP Pro on a Compaq system that already had XP Home installed on the hard drive. There were two partitions when he started but now there is only one partition. I just got off the phone with him and he said the problem is XP isn't reading the hard drive so it's not booting up. What could be the problem?
Whenever I install an OS I like to start clean and format it first. You could clean out the entire system and install XP Pro again (remember to backup data if you have any), if you want 2 partition it isn't hard to create with something like Partition Magic
