Drives Missing, Exclamation Mark in Device Manager…

slipd · 12 Jul 2006 at 23:17

Hey guys,

A pal of mine has recently installed a new HD and on returning to Windows found his CD drives missing from My Computer, but visible in Device Manager, but with yellow ‘!’ next to them.

Without me trekking over to see him, is there anything that springs to mind immediately? I’m all out of ideas?

He’s not moved any other cables he says, all the jumpers are correct and the new HD works fine

Thanks,

SW.

theredguy · 13 Jul 2006 at 06:45

Had some thing similar happent to me on a few occasions, fixed it by removing (not disabling) the IDE controlers in device manager then re booting and letting the system re install the drivers for them and the optical drives came back then.

Dutch Guy · 13 Jul 2006 at 10:34

Yeah, first thing I would do is delete all the IDE/SATA drivers, reboot and let Windows find and install them again.

slipd · 13 Jul 2006 at 11:29

Cheers guys,

Last night I got him to unplug the drives and boot into Windows, shut down and re-connect the drives, that didn't help

But as you both say, it is probably a controller issue rather than a drive issue.

I'll get him to give this suggestion a try

Thanks,

SW.

slipd · 13 Jul 2006 at 11:37

Just to clarify:

Is that what I get him to remove? Although in his case, I think he's using a VIA mobo.

Cheers,

SW..

theredguy · 13 Jul 2006 at 12:27

Yes.

Gimpymoo · 13 Jul 2006 at 13:50

http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/xp_cd_dvd_fix.vbs

Run the above on his PC and reboot.

Might work, might not. Depends what caused the problem. What error code is showing for the drives in device manager?

crashuk · 14 Jul 2006 at 02:32

go to device manager and then right click the name of the pc and click on scan for hardware changes.