computer question: 'ghost' cd drives

[dragon2 2]

Anybody who can help me with this one?

I have a Sony Vaio laptop with a dvd/cd-burner combo. Used to show up in Explorer as drive E.

I have XP home.

For some reason (we've been trying out various types of networks, and I've downloaded some XP upgrades too) now there are 3 drives showing, E/F/G. I think it split itself to a cd, dvd and cd-burner.

I'm not really liking this, tho it's more of a nuisance then a real problem.

Also I've noticed that all of a sudden any picture that's directly on my desktop (not in a dir) won't display in Explorer anymore, the rest works fine.

Another weird thing was that the Winamp version I had would play 1 track then play on but the sound (Wave, only) would be all the way down in Volume Control. So no more music.
Solved that one by getting Winamp3.

Seems like a WinXP update causing all this?

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[CrazyIvan 0]

Easy to fix:

Start WinXP in SAFE mode, then, go to DEVICE MANAGER (Right click on My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware tab and remove ALL THE CD/DVD/CDRW listed then reboot in normal mode.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[dragon2 2]

Nope no good. Not sure I even HAVE a safe mode anymore in XP home, so I did this in the normal mode. There's 2 drives listed, a SONY one and an AXV (SCSI). Uninstalling both then rebooting results in 3 drive letters again. Disabling the second drive results in 2, so at least a marginal improvement How come my laptop insists there's a SCSI drive in there too..?

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[CrazyIvan 0]

Yes..you CAN start in safe mode.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[dragon2 2]

OK, how then??

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[CrazyIvan 0]

Press F5 while the computer is booting (you might keep tapping on it) a menu will appear.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[PhillyKev 0]

Quote

Easy to fix:

Start WinXP in SAFE mode, then, go to DEVICE MANAGER (Right click on My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware tab and remove ALL THE CD/DVD/CDRW listed then reboot in normal mode.

They'll just get rediscovered on next boot up.

Just go into computer manager, then disk management. Right click and go to properties for the drives you don't want and change it to disabled in the drop down list.

[dragon2 2]

Right, forgot about that thanx.

But, no good. 3 drives, back in force Although strangely in safe mode there was only the one.

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[CrazyIvan 0]

Quote

Right, forgot about that thanx.

But, no good. 3 drives, back in force Although strangely in safe mode there was only the one.

That's why you have to REMOVE ALL drives...so, after doing that they are still back?

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.

[dragon2 2]

Yup I removed both of them. And both came back. The laptop really thinks it's in there, apperantly...

What I meant was in safe mode I got only drive E but both hardware drives were visible, with the SCSI drive still disabled. In normal mode the Sony drive is both E and F.

And no way that I'm going to reinstall XP...

ciel bleu,
Saskia

[CrazyIvan 0]

Interesting situation I have to say.

Since is a laptop, that CD unit has to be removable, so, I'd remove it PHYSICALLY and repeat the procedure above, boot a couple of times WITHOUT the CD inserted, then, insert it, reboot and see what happens.

__________________________________________
Blue Skies and May the Force be with you.