Loosing Drives

[eviltoon]

4 days ago I lost my DVD drive (D). It was not showing up on the list of Drive from My Computer. I uninstalled it, and tried to reinstall it...all attempts failed. An error message popped up telling my that I may have problems with the hardware and that it may not play properly. That sure is TRUE. I have assumed it was a hardware fault and was going to replace the DVD drive...not too concerned as I was planning on getting a Blu-ray anyway.

However, today I lost my G drive ( I have 5 Hardrives C, E, F, G (gone) and H). I am now sure this is trouble, but don't know where to start. WXhy are the drives disappearing from My Computer. As far as I can tell they no longer exist. Completely gone. I am sure the information on them is still there, I just cannot see or access the drives.

I am wondering if a fresh re-format of XP may solve this issue...or is it a motherboard problem. Anyone ever have this occur to them?

 

[mechBgon]

1) are the missing drives detected by the motherboard's BIOS during POST?

2) if yes, then right-click on My Computer on the Start menu or desktop screen, as the case may be, and choose Manage. The Computer Management window will open. Go down to Storage > Disk Management and see if the drives are listed there, and what their status is.

 

[EvilHomer]

I had this happen and it turned out to be a power supply issue. Just something else to check.

 

[eviltoon]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
1) are the missing drives detected by the motherboard's BIOS during POST?

2) if yes, then right-click on My Computer on the Start menu or desktop screen, as the case may be, and choose Manage. The Computer Management window will open. Go down to Storage > Disk Management and see if the drives are listed there, and what their status is.

Hello mechBgon...I did what you said and took a look at the Bios Post screen...I am not optamistic as I saw 3 IDE drives and a cd rom showing. Then the screen disappeared and text began scrolling very fast.

Following what you said about looking at the Manage option, I only saw 4 drives mentioned. All read health, but my 5th Hard drive was certainly missing.

Originally posted by: ecvilHomer
I had this happen and it turned out to be a power supply issue. Just something else to check.

This does not make me happy. Power supplies are very difficult to troubleshoot, short of just replacing them...

right now I am in the process of moving all my files on the c drive and will likely just re-format. See if that makes a difference. It's been a year since I've done this, so I'm kind of due for a refresh.

Thanks for your input folks!

 

[eviltoon]

Hmmm, as i work through this night I am observing other weird things begin to happen. My keyboard is loosing letters, and my PowerDvD program is launching without promting. I close it down and a few minutes later it relaunches...strange stuff. Maybe a virus eh???

 

[techmanc]

The more drives your system has the more you can have hardware conflicts. Try to minimize your BIOS of items like sound network parallel and serial ports and check you master slave setting for proper setup. I assume your using a controller for added devices that maybe conflicting as well.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: eviltoon
Hmmm, as i work through this night I am observing other weird things begin to happen. My keyboard is loosing letters, and my PowerDvD program is launching without promting. I close it down and a few minutes later it relaunches...strange stuff. Maybe a virus eh???

When programs launch unexpectedly, it does make you think it could be malware/viruses, but it seems extremely unlikely that they're causing your drives to vanish off the face of the motherboard, to where your BIOS can't even detect them.

If you don't have an antivirus program, AntiVir is a good free one: http://www.free-av.com

To check your power supply, you could start by looking in your BIOS at the PC Health section (the name will vary) to see what the 12-volt, 3.3-volt and 5-volt readings are. You want them within 5% of their intended voltages. If you have a digital multimeter and know how to use it, that's an even better way to check the PSU voltages.

If it were me, my top priority of all would be to back up my files before things get any worse than they already are.

 

[eviltoon]

Oh my lord, I got it!!!!

Just spent all night trying to load the darned DVD/CD optical driver, and failed every time. As I kept getting this message "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)" I did a search for this text and discovered this suggestion from a guy called scaramonga. Risky as anything but I felt I had nothing to lose.

He said...Reasons for this error include a driver that is not present; a binary file that is corrupt; a file I/O problem, or a driver that references an entry point in another binary file that could not be loaded.

Possible Solution...... There are 2 reg keys that can screw the device......remove them both and reboot......

The keys are:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} - "Upperfilters" and "Lowerfilters".

Folks, it worked!!!!

Thanks to all who gave suggestions. I am happy even though my night was dreadful