Help, disc drives won't work!

I have an IBM NetVista computer equipped with two disc drives, the
original one from the factory and a CD burner I installed afterward.

This evening I was sitting at my computer, not using it, talking to
someone on the phone and I noticed that there was a slash through the
Norton's AntiVirus icon, as if it weren't enabled. I clicked on it and
it wasn't just not enabled, I got a black screen telling me that an
..exe file was missing ... can't remember exactly which one, I did this
at home and had to run hurriedly back to work where I'm at now ... and
that I'd need to reinstall Norton's.

I attempted to do that in my original disc drive, which I use for
software CD-ROMs. I put the Norton's disc in the drive, it started
spinning but then I got an error message telling me that the H: drive
was not available. I tried it in the other disc drive, the burner
drive, and it told me that the G: drive was not available.

I restarted the computer and when it booted up, it gave me an error
message saying that Norton's e-mail antivirus protection was not
enabled, then the error screen telling me again that I needed to
reinstall Norton's. I tried again with each disc drive, and again
neither one worked.

I then clicked on My Computer to see if anything was out of the
ordinary there. It took absolutely forever for it to come up, but when
it did, on the two disc drive icons it just said "Local Drive," the
specific names of the drives (Lite-On 40125 for the burner drive,
Lite-On 48125 ... I think, not sure about that model number ... for
the original drive) were missing.

I tried Device Manger in Control Panels. It listed both drives as
being installed, I tried to updating the drivers and it told me both
drivers were installed as well.

I tried System Restore, both the Windows Me version and the
Support.Com version that I have on my computer through People PC, whom
I'm getting the computer from through a subsidized program at work. It
didn't work.

I tried doing a search function to see what files had been modified
during the day ... and it would not do a search of any type, it would
sit there for a while and then came up with this big long string of
numbers and it wasn't a "proper path" or something like that.

I did notice something else odd there ... when I looked at the choices
for where to search, I noticed that under Local Hard Drive it had
drives C (the real local hard drive), G and H there listed on one
line, then drives G and H listed on separate lines under that.

I also noticed two things ... my temp folder was full of stuff,
including a Cookies folder, a Temporary Internet Folder, one other
folder whose name escapes me and a whole bunch of other files that
started off ... again, I'm doing this in a frantic hurry off the top
of my head ... with wmp. I checked my hard drive and the actual
Cookies and Temporary Internet Folder were where they needed to be.

Also, a folder that I'd made called My Documents that was on my
desktop had disappeared, although it was still on the hard drive.

Everything else on the computer appears to be working fine, although
as I said I was on my supper hour from work and I didn't have time to
give it a thorough run-through, I'll do that after work this p.m.

The computer was booted up this a.m. and worked fine, no problems,
everything seemed to be OK.

It was shut down while my family and I were gone for a while today,
because there was the danger of inclement weather and even though we
have a surge protector, we had to have a new power supply put in the
computer because an earlier surge protector we had didn't stop a
surge.

It was booted back up by my wife this afternoon. She said, again, it
booted up fine and did not give any error messages or anything.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here? I'm frantic
about this because I am supposed to burn some items in trade for
someone this weekend, but as of right now my computer is definitely on
the fritz and my disc drives are not functioning.

Go to Norton's web site and run their on line virus check.


"Greg Bailey" wrote in message
om...
I have an IBM NetVista computer equipped with two disc drives, the
original one from the factory and a CD burner I installed afterward.

This evening I was sitting at my computer, not using it, talking to
someone on the phone and I noticed that there was a slash through the
Norton's AntiVirus icon, as if it weren't enabled. I clicked on it and
it wasn't just not enabled, I got a black screen telling me that an
.exe file was missing ... can't remember exactly which one, I did this
at home and had to run hurriedly back to work where I'm at now ... and
that I'd need to reinstall Norton's.

I attempted to do that in my original disc drive, which I use for
software CD-ROMs. I put the Norton's disc in the drive, it started
spinning but then I got an error message telling me that the H: drive
was not available. I tried it in the other disc drive, the burner
drive, and it told me that the G: drive was not available.

I restarted the computer and when it booted up, it gave me an error
message saying that Norton's e-mail antivirus protection was not
enabled, then the error screen telling me again that I needed to
reinstall Norton's. I tried again with each disc drive, and again
neither one worked.

I then clicked on My Computer to see if anything was out of the
ordinary there. It took absolutely forever for it to come up, but when
it did, on the two disc drive icons it just said "Local Drive," the
specific names of the drives (Lite-On 40125 for the burner drive,
Lite-On 48125 ... I think, not sure about that model number ... for
the original drive) were missing.

I tried Device Manger in Control Panels. It listed both drives as
being installed, I tried to updating the drivers and it told me both
drivers were installed as well.

I tried System Restore, both the Windows Me version and the
Support.Com version that I have on my computer through People PC, whom
I'm getting the computer from through a subsidized program at work. It
didn't work.

I tried doing a search function to see what files had been modified
during the day ... and it would not do a search of any type, it would
sit there for a while and then came up with this big long string of
numbers and it wasn't a "proper path" or something like that.

I did notice something else odd there ... when I looked at the choices
for where to search, I noticed that under Local Hard Drive it had
drives C (the real local hard drive), G and H there listed on one
line, then drives G and H listed on separate lines under that.

I also noticed two things ... my temp folder was full of stuff,
including a Cookies folder, a Temporary Internet Folder, one other
folder whose name escapes me and a whole bunch of other files that
started off ... again, I'm doing this in a frantic hurry off the top
of my head ... with wmp. I checked my hard drive and the actual
Cookies and Temporary Internet Folder were where they needed to be.

Also, a folder that I'd made called My Documents that was on my
desktop had disappeared, although it was still on the hard drive.

Everything else on the computer appears to be working fine, although
as I said I was on my supper hour from work and I didn't have time to
give it a thorough run-through, I'll do that after work this p.m.

The computer was booted up this a.m. and worked fine, no problems,
everything seemed to be OK.

It was shut down while my family and I were gone for a while today,
because there was the danger of inclement weather and even though we
have a surge protector, we had to have a new power supply put in the
computer because an earlier surge protector we had didn't stop a
surge.

It was booted back up by my wife this afternoon. She said, again, it
booted up fine and did not give any error messages or anything.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here? I'm frantic
about this because I am supposed to burn some items in trade for
someone this weekend, but as of right now my computer is definitely on
the fritz and my disc drives are not functioning.

1. Things appear to be OK now. When I got home, I tried to boot the
computer up but all I got was a blue screen saying that there was a
memory problem, not enough memory to run (something).exe (can't
remember, it was 2 a.m. and I was emotionally distraught). I figured I
was totally screwed at that point, with my No. 1 thought being that my
computer was riddled with virii. So, I killed the power at the mains
just to get out of the blue screen, rebooted and the computer
spontaneously came up in safe mode. Just to get it back in safe mode
made me feel a bit better.

So, I took my startup disk ... I plead guilty to not backing up stuff
as well as I should, although things like this tend to reinforce the
value of that and put the fear of God into folks, but I did have
enough foresight to have a startup disk on hand ... and booted the
computer off that, and it came up in a diagnostic mode. I then began
going down through the possibilities and thankfully only had to try
the first one, running scan disk on the registry. It popped up that
there was a problem, and gave me the options through System Restore of
returning to several registries of the last few days. I picked June
30, the earliest.

I rebooted my computer ... and everything was hunky-dory. Both CD
drives were there, and amazingly Norton's was back just as it ought to
be. I launched Norton's and updated everything ... had no problem
doing that ... and ran a full system scan, and just to make sure a
folder scan on Outlook Express where one would think any virus or worm
would've entered my system and possibly be lurking around in a .dbx or
something, and nothing came up.

I've sent a couple of test emails to and from alternate accounts, and
Norton's is scanning both incoming and outgoing mail as it should.

So, knock on wood, things are OK for the moment.

2. I was advised elsewhere (on the Windows ME group, I was a step
ahead of you!) to do a complete image backup of my hard drive because
it might be about to go south. What is the best way to do that?



"Graham Mayor" wrote in message ...
This is a Windows ME issue and not a CDR issue - the CDR problem is merely a
symptom of something deeper that has occurred. You may have more success
asking your questions in an ME newsgroup. However, if the problem persists,
you could try the following.
Switch off the computer - don't simply reboot or press reset. Rebooting does
not perform a cold reset.
Restart. Boot into the BIOS setup and see if the devices are correctly
recognized. If they are let the machine boot.
If not check the IDE cables. Is the system clock correct? If not check the
battery.
Does it start. Are the devices available?
Scan the hard disc disc for file errors
Empty all that crap out of the temp folder. Nothing in the temp folder is
required. Any application that needs a temp file will rebuild it.
Run an on-line virus check.
This may have been a minor aberration caused by a power surge, or it may
have been a virus attack.

--

Graham Mayor