F Drive (cd burner) disappears

[nanners]

Okay, I have a Compaq Presario 5000 Windows ME edition. The cd burner is part of the tower. Whenever I try to burn a cd (using Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4) it says that there are no burning devices present. So I clicked on 'My Computer' and the F drive was completely gone. Now the light on the cd burner won't go out and the tray won't open. This has happened a lot before, but it usually starts to work after a couple of days...but I'm not waiting anymore man. I want to burn my cd! I'm never buying another Compaq for the rest of my life.... Anyway, if anyone can help me out, I would really appreciate it. Thanks.

[meese]

Is this the only CD Rom in your system? How many hard drives do you have installed? Are there any errors listed in the device manager?

[nanners]

There is also a cd-rom drive on my computer, and it's working fine. I did a thorough scan disk, which did absolutely nothing, I defragmented my computer like ten times...nothing works. Crap. Now the light on the burner is completely out. It won't open or light up anymore. Nevermind, it lit up again....but it's still not working...I give up.

[meese]

Do give up. I have a few more questions.

1) Are both CD's connected to the same controller inside the PC?
2) If on the same controller is the burner CD a Master or Slave?
3) Do you have any USB or Firewire devices connected to your pc, like a memory card reader for a digital camera? These devices create on the fly "virtual hard drives" while they are connected. Windoes Me may not be smart enough to reassign the CD to a new letter if a USB device takes the one it already has.
4) Does your BIOS list both of your CD's? There should be a section in the BIOS which describes what type of hard drives and optical devices are connected to each IDE controller.

Let me know and I'll tell you some things to try.

[nanners]

Sorry, I don't know much about computers, but I think that the drives are connected to seperate controllers...but I'm not postitive on that one. I do have a digital camera that I plug into my computer, but it's not in right now. Where can I find the BIOS thing?

[meese]

The problem might have been caused when you plugged in the camera. Double click "My Computer". Post here the drives that are listed. For example you may have something like this:

Floppy A:
Local Disk C:
CDROM D:

Wait on the BIOS for a second.

[nanners]

Floppy (A
Local Disk (C
SYSTEM_SAV (D
Compact Disc (E
Control Panel



usually the F drive is there too...but it hasn't been there for weeks.

[nanners]

sorry about the smilies...those were supposed to be colons..oh well

[meese]

I like smilies.

Ok, I don't have a Compaq pc, but I think you need to press either the F2 key or F10 key during the initial boot-up of the pc to access the BIOS. There may even be a message displayed during boot-up that tells you what key to press to enter the BIOS (or it might say to enter setup). If you tap on the right key you should get to the BIOS. Once there read the text explaining how to move around. You can't use the mouse in there. Look for a section on boot devices or something like that. See if it lists both CDRoms. If you have a problem working with the BIOS, thats ok. Because no matter what it says I'm going to want you to open your pc and check how the cables are connected to your CD roms and to check and see whick one is the Master and which is the slave by the position of the little jumper on the back of each cdrom.

[nanners]

Okay. Well, I can't open up the tower right now because I have to go to work. If I do end up having to look at the connections and cables, I'll tell you what's connected to what. Thank you so much for helping me try to figure out the problem.