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    Acer Aspire 3000 - Not recognising CD Drive?

    Discussion in 'Acer' started by richardflair, May 29, 2007.

  1. richardflair

    richardflair Newbie

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    Hey,

    Bear with me, I'm sure my knowledge is pretty small compared to many others here. My Acer is almost a year old, and this problem has occurred before but was resolved by formatting and reinstalling Windows. However, at this moment in time, I don't have time to do that.

    My DVDRW drive, on bootup, isn't being recognised by the laptop. No matter how many times I reboot the laptop, it won't find the DVDRW which, a few days ago, was burning CDs for me! I've attempted to boot from CD-ROM but despite making the usual startup noises when I leave a CD in there, which should in theory leave me with a white text on black background startup message with something along the lines of "Cannot boot from E:\", the drive still isn't being recognised. I haven't had much, if any, physical contact with the laptop since the DVDRW drive was fully functional.

    Is there a doctor in the house? :)

    Cheers,
    Mike
     
    richardflair, May 29, 2007
    #1
  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    1. Does the BIOS list the optical drive when the computer is booting before Windows starts?

    2. Assuming the answer to 1 is yes, go into Device Manager. Is the CD / DVD drive listed. If so, right click and select uninstall. Also, under ATA/ATAPI controllers, look for the secondary IDE channel, right click and uninstall it.

    Then reboot. Windows should re-detect the devices you uninstalled.

    3. If the answer to 1 is no, then I would suggest physically removing and replacing the optical drive. It is usually held in by one or two screws, usually under the computer but may be under the keyboard.

    If there was no secondary IDE channel it is possible that the optical drive shares the primary IDE channel with the HDD. It is usually, but not always, safe to uninstall that (the problem arises if you have a special IDE controller which needs a special driver).

    I am sure I have read about circumstances which cause the optical drive to disappear.

    Here is one.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, May 29, 2007
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  3. hotvans

    hotvans Newbie

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    Hi

    I have a similar problem - last week my drive just disappeared even though there was a cd in it - i managed to get the cd out using the untwisted paper clip method but my acer still says i do not have this drive any more. I think you can help me but I don't fully understand the instructions you gave out - I am not very technical at all.

    Could you talk me through how to recover my cd drive?

    Many thanks
     
    hotvans, Mar 31, 2008
    #3