T40 CDRW/DVD has Disappeared!

[mpcook]

We have not used the CDRW/DVD drive in the T40 for a few months. When trying to read a CD today, the TP acts as if the drive is not there. It does not appear in My Computer, and there is the dreaded yellow exclamation point in Device Manager. I (1) tried a known good drive from a T43 with no result, (2) tried the T40's drive in the T43 where it worked fine and (3) uninstalled the drive in Device Manager and rebooted. The TP did not find or see the drive when it booted up; I thought it might find the drive and reinstall drivers as needed. I want to be sure that this is either a software (driver) problem or a hardware problem (would be motherboard I suppose). When I go to Lenovo, there is no CD driver listed. I am guessing because this is a generic driver already within Windows XP. Anyone have any ideas on any other diagnostic to try?

Thanks!
Mike

[richk]

First, hit F12 at power up. See if the device appears as a boot option.

[dsvochak]

I ran across this problem once. The instructions here cured the problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

[mpcook]

First, hit F12 at power up. See if the device appears as a boot option.

The CD drive shows on the boot list. However, once I get into Windows, it is not working. I did get the drive to be seen by Windows when I went to "add new hardware" but got an error while installing "there is a problem with your new hardware...". Finally, I rebooted with a boot cd in the drive (my Acronis startup disk) and it read the disk and booted from. So unfortunately this is a Windows problem. I don' t know where to go to get a proper uncorrupted driver.

[mpcook]

I ran across this problem once. The instructions here cured the problem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

This very simply solved the problem. (I still don't know why this happened to begin with, but nice to have a simple solution).

Thanks!
Mike

[dsvochak]

I still don't know why this happened to begin with...

The way the support article is written I'm not sure Microsoft knows why it happened. Anyway, glad it worked for you.