My disc drive is not reading discs and I have no sound device.

[mjwright]

Hi

 

I am running windows xp professional on a packard bell pc. A few weeks ago my disc drive stopped reading discs of any form, but will open and close ok. I have tried alot of things suggested online to no avail and now I have lost my sound device as well. I am really frustrated and with limited experience I am now really confused to what I have and haven't done. Any advice out there would be greatly received.

[KenB]

Hi and welcome to ExTS

 

I have tried alot of things suggested online

Could you let us know what you have tried - otherwise we will probably end up going over what you have already done.

 

Is this a desktop or laptop ?

 

If you click on "My Computer" is the drive recognised there ?

[mjwright]

Hi i have tried deleting the upper and lower filters which there weren't any to delete. I have tried uninstalling the drive, I also tried a system restore to when it was going and they kept coming back as Incomplete. The computer shows that it is there but when you put a disc in it doesn't show up. thanks

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, have you looked in device manager?

to open device manager click "Start" then "Run", type or copy and paste

 

devmgmt.msc

 

Then click "OK"

 

Any red or yellow marks showing?

Click the arrow to the left of DVD/CD-ROM drives to expand and check,

Also do the same for "Sound, video and game controllers" Again any red or yellow marks?

 

Nev.

[mjwright]

Hi Nev,

There is no yellow or red marks by disc drive, but there is by one in the sound games etc.

Thanks

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, it looks like you may have lost the sound driver in trying other things to get the disk drive to work.

Go back to the device manager, either click the arrow or double click on "sound, video and game controllers", then double click on the next thing to open, you should see a properties box open, under general it should tell you what the sound system is by make and type, next click the drivers tab. Hopefully there will be a tick box saying "Enable" for the driver. If not that it may need a simple reinstall of the driver, however for that we need to know what the sound system is in order to find where to download it from.

 

Is the sound system the Realtek AC 97, or is it different to that?

Let us know what you can about it please.

 

Now to the disk drive itself, from the checks and everything you have tried, plus the fact there is no failed (Red or yellow) marks, it may be a pure mechanical failure of the read head in the drive, and I am afraid the only cure is a new disk drive.

The only way to check for sure with a possible mechanical failure, is to try the drive in another computer, and or install a known to be working disk drive in its place.

If a known to be good disk drive works OK, the original must be duff, and so on.

 

Nev.

[KenB]

From Nev's post.....

it may be a pure mechanical failure of the read head in the drive

 

If the drive covers both CDs and DVDs there will be 2 lasers. ( one for each type of disk )

It could be, as Nev suggests - a failure of the drive itself - or it could be that one of the lasers is damaged / out of alignment.

If it reads DVDs but not CDs ( or vice versa ) then this is the problem.

 

Either way - from what you have tried - it looks as if the drive needs replacing.

 

One last possibility ...

 

click here

 

Use the FixIt

You will need to be on the machine with the problem drive.

[mjwright]

Hi,

there is a small window that has enable and disable and the enable option is highlighted and I have clicked Ok but it didn't make any difference.

For the info about the driver where the yellow warning sign is called Audio bus on high definition bus.When I open the properties box and open the driver it has provider unknown and all the rest is unknown. Device status is the drivers for this device are not installed

Also I haven't been able to get the Add hardware wizard to complete downloading it says an error occurred and cannot complete, the same has happened with the system restore and also the fixit link in the post below.

[KenB]

Hi

 

It seems you have more problems than just the CD Drive.

 

Start > Run ....type in ....cmd .....ENTER

at the prompt type in ....... sfc /scannow ......ENTER

 

This will check the system files and repair any problems found.

[mjwright]

Hi I tried that and it said it could not complete the scan without an windows xp disc, there was a window that said to try without disc anyway so clicked that and it always returned to the disc needed window.

 

Thanks

[KenB]

Hi

 

without the XP disk the errors will not be able to be corrected.

 

Your profile says XP - Pro.

 

If you look at the label on the side of the case - does it say XP Pro OEM ?

 

If it is a full - non-OEM installation you can borrow a disk if you know of anybody with one and use that.