XP doesn't see my drives...

[Jyncus]

Earlier today I was installing some burner software, that came with my Plextor drive... I installed Easy CD Creator 4 and Direct CD.
Upon rebooting, I recieved the error message that the two applications had known compatibility issues with XP, and that the drivers would not be used.

So, then I just uninstalled both programs, and rebooted again. After rebooting, I started the installation of Office 2000 (disc 2) --which I had been installing previously, before the Easy CD Creator...
Anyway, I went into My Computer, and found only C: and A:! I had 4 IDE drives in here, including 2 40GB Western Digitals, a Pioneer 16x DVD, and the Plextor 12x10x32 Writer.
Windows doesn't detect my second 40gig, the Pioneer, or the Plextor.

I rebooted again, went into BIOS to check if the IDE auto-detect would see the drives, and it did. I opened RegCleaner and scanned for any remaning traces of Adaptec reg entries, and found none...


So I'm lost here...Can anyone suggest something I haven't thought of?
I appreciate any help.

 

[Theslowone]

you could try reverting back to a previous state. Is everything showing up fine in your my computer/hardware?

If they are in mycomputer/hardware then you could try uninstalling them then let windows reinstall them.

 

[Jyncus]

I checked device manager, and all three of my removable disk drives (third one is a Daemon Phantom drive...) have the "!" next to them...
So, the first thing I did was remove all three, and let windows scan for new hardware. It found all three drives, but when they were added, they had the same problem.

I checked properties on each drive, and they all say:

"Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The
driver may be corrupt or missing. (Code 39)

Click Troubleshoot...etc."

When I try to update the driver for any of them, it says:

"The wizard could not find a better match for your hardware then the software currently installed."

err...do I need to download drivers from MS, and reinstall? I'm still pretty lost...

 

[chaswood]

Probably the easiest fix is to re-install XP. Put in your XP disk, choose install, and choose the option that will fix your current installation without removing anything.

I don't remember the exact procedure, but it's pretty straightforward and usually takes care of a a lot of these types of problems. I've done it a couple of times and it leaves all my applications and data intact.

 

[Jyncus]

umm..i can't run my XP disc, if I don't have a CD drive to play it in.

Windows is only seeing my hard disks, and the floppy... So, a CD I put in the drive doesn't autoplay, and I can't do anything.
The only way I can see getting the driver files, is via download from MS somehow..

any suggestions?

 

[Theslowone]

Try unplugging the drives rebooting then plug them back in.

 

[CZroe]

Hey again Will
What chaswood is saying doesn't matter if XP can see the drive or not. XP didn't need to see the drive when you first installed off of that CD because XP was not installed at all! I'll give you a call about it...

 

[chaswood]

Thanks, CZ, for the clarification.

Yes, you said that your BIOS recognizes your CD-ROM drive before the OS starts loading. Go to the setup and set the CD as the 1st boot device, the boot from your XP setup disk.