burner is gone

My best advice currently, is to back up\save ALL files etc you can't afford to lose, currently I suggest doing that before any of this, worst case if something goes wrong you wont have lost anything, this is just in case you accidentally get the system to fully reinstall, see if any of this yields any results, beyond this I would have to let those who know more than I carry on, as such issues I would have to get my hands on it and just stumble around, whereas the other guy's know this deep level to make any suggestions that may help more than I can, so see how this goes, then we can go from there.

Cld, 8210Guy has summed it up here in this quote and it may be best to follow his advice. But lets take 1 step back and as the saying goes, we may be like a dog chasing his tail.

Have you tried what I suggested in post 9, it may be best to do so because this would eliminate all possibilities of a bad drive and tbh this is the best way to go. If the drive proves to be good then you have to get more help from the tech's here to see what other causes may be.

It could be a bad controller but not sure if this may be your case or not. In any event if the drive proves to be good then setting the system back to out of the box state might be your option. Some systems I have seen have the ability to reset the system basics\drivers without formatting the system, or if you have a disk, you can select to repair the system, as opposed to reinstalling it, so have a look for any such recovery options, if it's store bought it should have built in recovery.

But bottom line before spending more time of chasing a wild goose, lets try what I said in post # 9 to rule out this drive.

Jimbo1

sorry i should have been more clear. there isnt any "restore to out of box state" and the drive fine. i have done a start up repair with win 7 as well. question, with windows 7 when it's reinstalled doesnt it make a windows.old file which in fact contains all your docs, pics, vids, programs, movies etc? if so then wouldnt i have nothing to worry about?

Sorry for a slow reply, been away a few days helping a friend sort his kitchen.
Anyway, I couldn't say for sure "IF" it would do that (although I suspect it may), BUT, even if it did, if you have stuff you can't afford to lose, then it is advised do NOT rely on this alone, IMHO you should always treat data that can't be lost with extreme care (eg 2 or 3 various back up's), once a drive, or system goes bad, it could be too late to save anything, so it's very important to regularly back up essential files (obviously those that have changed or are new) for peace of mind.

TBH 3rd party auto driver programs are not worth it, there is no replacement for going direct to the makers sites and downloading from them, because you have no idea if what they suggest are the latest, or even if they are untouched (not from the makers), they can often suggest drivers that wont work on your system, albeit they are right for the hardware, possibly why so many are failing to install perhaps ?

What I suggest is to identify each component individually then go to that makers site, go to the support\downloads section, then find you're device and download the driver for your OS, repeat this with each component, I suggest saving to the desktop for ease of finding, but thats up to you, once they are all downloaded you can install them in turn, a valuable tip here is put each in it's own folder, basically name some folders like Chipset, Video, LAN etc, save the corresponding file to it's own folder, it saves wondering just what driver is what, as the download names are not always clear, without this you wont know which to use first etc..

For maximum safety disconnect from the net until finished, pause\disable ALL protection, and exit any other programs running in the task bar, if you have Winpatrol you can go into that and set each program to disable, it will be the fastest way to do it, as opposed to doing it every reboot, once finished go into winpatrol and enable all the programs again, reboot and all programs will start normally, once done you will be safe to connect into the net again.

Programs such as PC WIZARD, or System Information for Windows are a great help in finding out system details, if you can't find the driver for something, let us know and we can look for you, but needless to say we would need the device make\model, and the motherboard will have multiple drivers, get them all.
When you start installing, do it in the following order, Chipset, Video, Sound, then as you please, and the most important thing, when installing a file, do it by right clicking on it, and select Run as Admin, some files wont install right without this, see if any of this helps.