ATA Optical drives - None work!

[blueprint]

I'm frustrated.
A couple of days ago both of my optical drives wouldnt show up in my computer for some reason and they are shown with warning signs in device manager.. Their model numbers and details come up, but they won't work. Iv'e replaced them with another drive and the same happens, so it's not the drives.

Why does this happen?

[directhex]

sounds like either you've screwed up a setting (e.g. jumpers are wrong), or more likely, your OS is to blame

try booting another OS (yes, from cd), which should work if it's a problem with your current OS config and nothing lower-level

[blueprint]

Thanks for that. I'll have a further play around.

Arghh

[Steve]

You changed any CD/DVD burning apps recently? Upper/lower filters can often knacker optical drives.

[blueprint]

I fixed it now with a system restore. I don't like having to use that. It seems to have worked. No idea what caused it.

[max99]

As Steve mentioned,this is usually down to a problem with Upper/Lower filters and is often caused by installing or uninstalling burning software. There's a simple registry fix here if it ever happens again:

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

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