DVD drives 'gone missing'

[Smudger]

I had a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW drive set up and working fine, but last night I loaded up Nero 7 Essentials which came free with a hard drive I bought, and now neither optical drive is working. They're being picked up in the BIOS, so both power and data cables are working, but when Windows starts up, I go to Device Manager and it says that the drivers and software loaded successfully, but windows could not find the device.

Anyone got any ideas?

[shaithis]

Are you using an NForce based motherboard?

If so, run the nforce driver installer and make sure that the IDE drivers are NOT installed.

[Smudger]

No, the A8V is a Via-based MB.

*edit* The drives are both running off the secondary IDE adaptor, although there is nothing on the primary adaptor as I have SATA HDs. Would moving the IDE to primary make the comp try to boot from DVD?

[killie99]

The IDE controllers are both selected in the BIOS? Don't assume because the BIOS can see the drives that the IDE ports are selected, go into the BIOS and check they are set as "Enabled".

What does the Nero info tool say about your optical drives, does it see them?

Have you tried uninstalling Nero 7 to see if the drives come back?

[d3fiant]

I would definatly run them on seperate ports if u can as IDE can only deal with one talking at any one time so you get queuing of data. As for the exact problem, my first port of call would be to uninstall the software that caused this like killie99 suggests above, then hunt for an explanation by specifically searching for Nero issues, is an odd one tho

[killie99]

Hmmm, just had a look at the manual and there isn't a option in the BIOS to enable or disable the IDE ports so that's that idea up in smoke .......

Have you tried deleting the IDE controller in windows and letting it reinstall the drivers?

Have you tried disconnecting each of the optical drives one at a time to see if either of them come up?

[alsenior]

down load the tweekui powertool from microsoft's site. it allows you to show hidden drives. there is and issue with some installers when for whetever reason windows hides the disc drives

[directhex]

actually, this is a fairly common sympton of "filter drivers". these sit between the usual windows cd drive driver and you, and are used for things like adding file system support, or for copy protection systems like starforce.

try http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/

[Smudger]

Thanks for the help guys.

Luckily I had just taken a full backup prior to installing Nero, so I just restored and everything seems fine now. I don't think I'll bother with Nero in future.