disk drive problems!

[ella]

my dvd-rom and cd-rw drives have stopped working. when i turn the computer on, it says that it recognises them. but when i put a cd in, neither of them will read it. and when i look in "my computer" only the floppy drive, the C and D drives, and the control panel show up.
we uninstalled the cd and dvd drives, rebooted the machine, and then the computer detected them, said that it found drivers for them, and installed the drivers. it said to restart, so we did. but then the drives still didn't show up. when i look in the hardware device manager, the icons for those 2 drives have the exclamation point on them, and it gives the message: "This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31)"
the dvd drive is a toshiba sd-m1402, and when i searched for a driver the toshiba site said that it doesn't require a specific driver. the cd-rw drive is a sony crx140e. when i search for drivers i get a lot of results that have negative comments.
please help me! i don't know what to do. my dad said i should just reinstall windows 2000, and reinstall all the microsoft updates in order to see if one of those is what messed it up. i really hope there is something else i can do.

[Kaiser]

It can be a couple things:

1) driver problems - get the latest drivers from the manufacturer's website

2) motherboard bios - update your bios from the manufacturer's website

3) IDE cable - check the cable and replace it with a new spare one if possible.

[DarkAeons]

[Yebyosh]

If your problem is a recent problem with your rig, try the help above.

If your problem occured because you just installed a new DVD-ROM or CD-RW, might I suggest that you first physically check to see that only one drive ( Hard drive or Optical drive) is set to Master and the others to Slaves on each IDE channel.

Since you mentioned having problems with the Sony CRX140e, take a read through the following link
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=43625&page=1

Since your issue is dealing with detection of your drives, you might want to take a look at the following links
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/4551
http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/index.php?fn=browse_forum&f=494

[ella]

thanks for your help, everyone.

but sometime in the last 6 hours, a miracle occurred.

i decided that i was angry at internet explorer about 4 days ago. so i downloaded netscape. today (well, technically yesterday), while my dad was using my computer to try out his links for his website project, he had to download a quicktime plugin for netscape. this also put iTunes on my machine. i have been on the computer for about 5 hours since then, and netscape was acting like a brat. so i deleted that, and downloaded firefox. i clicked on "my computer" to bring internet explorer back up, and i noticed that my drives were back! (i brought internet explorer up so i can watch music videos on yahoo launch, since they don't work with firefox.) something that happened within the last 6 or so hours made the drives come back. though i am a bit confused...

i even reset the comp to see if my drives would stay, and they did! i was so excited, i nearly had a fit. i just hope that they stay. if not, i may have to get my bro to try your suggestions (because i'm pretty stupid with computers)

If you are still reading, i just want to say THANK YOU again for all your help! you guys are so friendly! i love this site! (i know... i'm babbling )

[DarkAeons]

Was a pleisure
LOL @ your computer ;P

[isamu_sagora]

i have the same problem with my burner. i reinstalled the driver, i can see it as an icon in my computer, however when i insert a blank CD in order to burn, i get a weird noise and does not respond when i click on the icon.
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