CD Drive Not detecting Cd

[unclefucer2]

I was trying to reformat my computer, and I put my windows xp cd into my cd drive and it said please insert cd in drive. I went into my cd drive properties to see if it was working properly and it said it was. I unistalled my drive and reinstalled it and still had the same problem. I then borrowed a working cd rom and installed that and still had the same problem. Could this be a problem with my hard drive? I also have no internet at this point (posting from work). Are there any suggestions? I am fairly computer illiterate so i have tried as much as i can think of. I can't do a system restore because somehow it was turned off. Is there a way to reformat manually? I am afraid of this because i am unsure if it will read my cd drives when i go to install windows xp again.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Do any CDs work in your CD drive? The drive itself could have gone bad, what type is it and how old?

 

[unclefucer2]

it is some generic cd drive and is about 2 yrs old. and no, other cd's do not read on it, but i tried a cd drive from my roomate and installed taht and it could not read other cd's or the xp cd either.

 

[unclefucer2]

if there is no real solution for this, would going out and buying a new hard drive, and cd drives work. I dont have any reason to keep my other one. I have a feeling there is some kind of virus on it, which is not allowing it to read my drives. but i ran adaware and spybot and it picked stuff up but couldn't delete it all. And i ran norton and found nothing. But as of right now i am unable to connect to the internet and it won't read any cds. what is the best solution?

 

[digitalwanderer]

Buying a new hard-drive would mean re-installing windows, buying a new CD drive won't fix it if trying a known good one from a friend didn't fix it.

I think if I were in your boat I would back up everything as best I could and reformat, but make SURE you know how before you begin!

 

[unclefucer2]

how do i reformat without my cd drives reading the xp disc? is there a manual reformat to do? and how do i then install xp if i am unsure it is going to read my cds?

 

[Vortigern_red]

Try using a bootable CD in the drive to see if its a hardware or Windows problem. Knoppix would be good but your Windows CD is also bootable if thats all you have, assuming you have a Windows CD and not some sort of restore disk.

 

[l15741]

I had a similar problem, and after talking to support people and more knowlegable friends for a while, it ends up some upper and lower something values needed to be cleared... Long story short it was a registry problem and deleating some values make the drive work again. I'm sorry, I don't rember much because it was a while ago, but maby with that start, someone will take it from here.

And is this is the case there is no way to reformat till this problem is solved I think because your CD drive is not talking to the rest of your computer, so there is no way to get information from the CD, to the rest of your computer. Sorry to just give some half answers, but I hope they lead you somewhere.

 

[Vortigern_red]

And is this is the case there is no way to reformat till this problem is solved I think because your CD drive is not talking to the rest of your computer,

No, in this case your CD drive is not talking to Windows but is still capable of talking to your computer, you can still reformat and reinstall from your WindowsXP CD. Although, obviously, fixing the problem in your case was a far better option then reformating anyway.

If he tries the bootable CD option I gave above it would answer the question of whether his CD drive is unable to talk to Windows or unable to talk to his computer and then he could start working on a fix.