My D drive disappeared.

[Leeza]

Has this ever happened to anyone before? We were listening to a CD in the D drive (12x DVD-ROM) and left it in overnight with the computer turned off. The green CD drive light was blinking when I turned the computer on in the morning, but I didn't pay any attention to it until we wanted to take the CD out but it wouldn't open. When we go into My Computer there is no D Drive listed anymore. Does anyone know where it went or how to get it back?

[Erdrick Holmes]

Almost half of the net plus computers have fad the D: Drive just end up not being present. Does the disk tray slide out when you hit the eject button? You prolly have the data connector discconected but a powersupply is still there. You might have to open up your system to check.

[ZeZipster]

Try seeing if it's connected.

[Leeza]

My disk tray doesn't slide out and I'm assuming that it's connected because the green light was blinking, although it isn't anymore. How do I check if it's connected?

[ZeZipster]

Take the frame off of your computer and look at the back of the CD-Rom drive. You may want to look at the site that makes the CD-Rom drive (if you didn't purchase it seperatly then I would reccomend going to the site that manufactured your computer). There is a possibility that this is a common issue. I take it you've tried rebooting your computer?

[Erdrick Holmes]

Your drive connections have probably came unplugged inside your system, have you picked it up and moved it recently (your system) that might have farked up the internal connections.

[Leeza]

I did try rebooting and I would think that it was connected because the green drive light was blinking, but I will check the connections tomorrow. I vacuumed it out about a month ago so maybe something did come loose.

[Yamaneko]

Go into the BIOS when your computer boots up (usually hit "Delete" or "F1", it should tell you), then under "Boot" or something similar, check whether the D Drive is set to boot up when the computer turns on, if not, make sure you select it so it will boot up with the rest of the computer.

[crono_logical]

If the light is on, it has a power supply so should eject regardless of whether the data cable is also plugged in or not, so that doesn't explain why it won't eject.

Checking the BIOS when the computer boots up is also a good idea, yeah, since you can see if the device was identified by the PC or not. You don't have to set it to boot though, just enabled, since that's really a waste of time for when you start the PC since I doubt you boot off the CD very often - in the rare case you need to, you can change it temporarily in the BIOS anyway.



I think it may be the drive failing to initialise on boot up because of the audio disc inside it, which may be damaged so confusing the drive or something, which is why it may not eject with power since it's still trying to work out what disc it is. What you could try is switch the computer off, then look on the front of the drive. There should be a tiny circular hole into which you can insert a very thin object. I'd say a straightened paperclip works best - just push one into there. It should need some force, since that's the emergency tray release cactch thing to let you remove any discs in case of lack of power, but you should feel a lever inside being pushed back as you push the straight paperclip in, causing the tray slide out enough you you to open it by hand (slowly) and remove the disc then paperclip. Then try turning the PC on once the disc is out and see if it helps. You shouldn't need to close the tray, it should do that by itself when you boot the PC up again.

[Leeza]

Thanks for all of your help guys, but when I turned the computer on again this morning the computer was recognizing my D drive and the tray opened without any problems.

crono, we tried to open the disc tray by inserting a paperclip into that little hole and we could feel something being moved, but the tray still didn't move. We didn't actually try to pull it out manually at the same time though so maybe we should have tried that.

I guess maybe it was the CD that was left inside that must have been causing the problem. It's new though and it doesn't appear to be damaged, but I guess that's what I get for listening to <i>Radiohead</i>. :)

[Dr Unne]

You really have to jam the paperclip in there to get the door open. Like, a couple inches.

I don't know why leaving a CD in the drive should make your drive stop being recognized by Windows. I've left CDs in for a week at a time and nothing bad ever happened. Maybe it's a Windows thing.

[Leeza]

I don't know why leaving a CD in the drive would make Windows not recognize it. Maybe it's like crono said, the CD is damaged in some way and the drive is having problems reading it. Well actually, that would make the disk tray not open and stuff, but that really shouldn't have anything to do with Windows not regognizing the drive.

Maybe it is the connection. If it happens again I'll have to get inside and check that out, but I don't want to do that unless I really have to. I'm just glad that it's working now.

[Citizen Bleys]

I occasionally have the same problem with my burner--Usually I burn a disc, the tray ejects automatically--and then when I go to close it, nothing.

Rebooting fixes it every time.

[Yamaneko]

And once again we prevail over the shoddiness of Microsoft Windows.

[crono_logical]

I don't think it was Windows but more the BIOS at bootup not initialising the drive or whatever - I've only had this happen to me once before, and that was also when I left an Audio CD in it, although this was on an old PC about 5-6 years ago. Being a "recent" CD you have, it might have some dodgy thing on it from the RIAA to prevent copying or whatever so it's not a standard CD or something as far as it's TOC structure is concerned :p