I read another post on here about someone having the same issues I'm having and now I can't find it. Regardless I've been trying their suggestions, at least some of them, and nothing has worked yet. The drive lights up when I stick a disc in, blinks 6 or 7 times, acts like it's going to start spinning and then does nothing. I tried checking my bios for the standard cmos settings and they are nowhere to be found. Tried finding the drive in the device manager and I had a few errors. Fixed one and there was some kind of error that said it was an "unknown device" but it couldn't fix it. Not sure if it's talking about the cd rom drive or not. The computer is an HP Compaq AMD Turion 64 X2. The OS I'm using on it is an unverified version of Windows 7 Ultimate.
Just realized I wasn't looking in the right place. I'm in the device manager now and there is no folder for optical devices but under disk drives there is one and it says it's working properly. Is that the CD rom or something else?
Your CD might not be operating because your auto-start is switched off (a good idea anyway).
Put a disk in your optical drive and click on Start / my computer / double click on your Optical drive
Is it functioning ?
In your device manager you should see something like this (I'm using XP).
[attachment removed]
Cheers,
Lee
The Auto Start might very well be off but I'm not sure on that. If XP isn't that far off from windows 7 then something is wrong. In my device manager I don't have a DVD/CD rom option. Only disk drive is on there. So Windows isn't recognizing my CD rom drive. So I need to start there before any place else I would imagine. That's where I've been at really and don't know what the next step is. Everyone must not be in a helping mood lately since out of 46 views you were the only one who responded. Thanks
Sounds like windows has not installed the generic drivers for your optical drive. All CD drives use generic Windows drivers.
1. Check the connections of your optical to make sure it is correctly connected.
2. Scan for Hardware Changes:
2a. Logon to the computer with administrator account or privileges and click on Start button.
2b. From the start menu right click on Computer and from the appeared menu click on Manage.
2c. On Computer Management snap-in in the left pane click on Device Manager and from the right pane right-click on the name of your computer (which will be at the top of the list).
3d. From the menu click on Scan for hardware changes and follow the instructions on your computer screen.
If your optical drive is connected correctly, Windows 7 will detect your optical drive and install a driver for it. You should now see your CD drive in the device manager as shown in my previous post.
Yea I did that and nothing changed. When I right clicked and scanned for hardware changes it didn't bring up any instructions other than a box saying it was Plug and Play compliant hardware. I guess my drive must not be connected properly. So even though the light blinks and it opens up it can still be disconnected? Thanks for you help Lee
So even though the light blinks and it opens up it can still be disconnected?
If this is a Desktop then yes, Desktop CD/DVD drives connect with both a data and power cable. If the power cable is plugged in properly it will still open and close, but if the data cable is loose or unplugged the computer will not see it. Laptop CD/DVD drives use a different connector architecture and are unlikely to have that type of connector issue.
If you feel confident enough you can open the case and see if the drives connectors are seated properly. Make sure the computer is unplugged, and you have grounded yourself properly, before playing around inside the computer. Hope this helps
