laptop still can't read CD Rom - help please!

[Claw75]

I had a similar problem first time i istalled i-tunes. Turns out it happened to all Pacard bell lappies and some others.... dunno if this helps. I just coughed up for the call centre phone call, who talked me thru the fix. gl.

You are a star Matt - I'll bet that's what's happened.  Cheers.

[Claw75]

Hmm - it gets stranger.  It temporarily fixed itself, and has now gone again.  I went into my computer, and found that the D drive had reappered - hooray!  stuck in a disk and was able to view pics.  'good' i thought, 'i'll go back and sort those out later'.  Several minutes later disk drive starts making a noise - pics can't be viewed.  I took the disk out and decided to go back to look at device manager and maybe have ago at updating drivers.  By the time I get there the DVD drive has disappeared from device manager and D: drive now disappeared from my computer.  Could it be something as simple as a loose connection?

[RichEO]

So the drive sometimes doesn't appear in device manager and my computer....

I though you said it was showing up fine 

Device manager thinks the drive is working ok.

This might help, someone had a similar problem http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/535586-cd-dvd-drivers-missing-corrupt.html

[Claw75]

So the drive sometimes doesn't appear in device manager and my computer....

I though you said it was showing up fine 

Device manager thinks the drive is working ok.

This might help, someone had a similar problem http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/535586-cd-dvd-drivers-missing-corrupt.html

sorry - that was a technophobe mistake - I was looking at disk drives through device manager rather than DVD drive

thanks - will check that link

[Claw75]

tried the fix on that link but still no good.  I'm wondering now if it might be something a bit more serious than just a lost/dodgy D drive.  Out of the blue last week I got the blue screen of death.  Restarted the computer and it took an absolute age to reload, but seemed ok ish after that.  Ever since then, every time I've started up my computer I've been prompted to register it (I did that when I bought it).  Other strange thing that happened tonight is that when I tried to use packard bell's support site, I entered the serial number of the machine (several times) and it wasn't recognised. 

[Kaiser Soze]

Out of the blue last week I got the blue screen of death.  Restarted the computer and it took an absolute age to reload, but seemed ok ish after that.  Ever since then, every time I've started up my computer I've been prompted to register it (I did that when I bought it).

That sounds like corruption of the filesystem. Do you have the XP installation CD? If so, reboot from that (you may have to reset the BIOS to boot from DVD/CD) and try using the recovery console to fix any errors. A corrupt filesystem could explain system instability but I've never come across anything like that before myself.

[Claw75]

Thanks for all your help guys.  I tried another google search and managed to find a patch that seems to have fixed it all.  Have now managed to get some pics added to facebook

[tikay]

Go on Claire, come clean. You forgot to turn it on at the Mains.....

[Claw75]

Go on Claire, come clean. You forgot to turn it on at the Mains.....

shhhhh