More Windows madness

[ciphergoth]

I have to get the cable modem failing under Windows before I can call support about it. My efforts to do this are hampered by Windows failing in new and interesting ways.

This time, it has lost the CD-ROM drive. I've looked in the Device Manager, and it can't see anything hanging off the secondary IDE. I've tried disabling and re-enabling it, to no effect. Linux can still see and use the drive just fine, so it's not a hardware problem. Without the CD-ROM drive, I can't make it do very much...

Does anyone have any idea what might cause a problem like this, or what I can do to fix it? Or am I stuck with finally buying a backup device and re-installing Windows?

Comments

[lovingboth]

Presumably the BIOS sees it, and it's readable from DOS?

What happens if you physically disconnect the drive, boot, refresh devices, shut down, reconnect, restart and refresh again? What if you try it on the primary controller?

Memory is telling me that there is something that causes this sort of problem - sure it's correctly set up as a master (possibly master no slave which some drives want to be told) if it's the only device on the secondary controller? Proper OSs - DOS and Linux - will see it if it's not, but Windows won't.

Backup devices are useful: a CD writer should be in everyone's PC.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it's a laptop, and the CD drive is wired in, so physically disconnecting it is not an option. The BIOS does see it. DOS doesn't have the drivers to see it.

It used to work. It has mysteriously failed.

It would take a *lot* of CD burning to back up my data. I don't think it's a practical way to go - some sort of tape streamer is called for.

[lovingboth]

Ah, a laptop. Expensive doorstops, IME. When they're not being dropped or nicked. If it's in warranty, shout at the makers.

DOS should just need a generic EIDE CD-ROM driver (virtually all of them work with everyone else's) + MSCDEX.

There must be a Windows PC in the flat somewhere, mustn't there?

The advantage of CD blanks is that a) they tend to be faster to read than tape, b) the format should last longer than any tape format, c) they're readable in any CD-ROM drive whereas tape drives have an annoying habit of ending up only reading things they've written (and how many people even have DAT drives, for example), d) they're not magnetic, e) they're now commodity items, whereas nearly all tapes are proprietary, f) that also means they're dirt cheap, and g) there exist programs like Ghost and Drive Image which will chuck data at them in 650M chunks.

For me, all that outweighs having to use more blanks than I would tapes. The only alternative I'd consider is swappable hard drives.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Given that a 30Gb tape streamer plus three tapes looks to be costing me 600 quid, you might be right...

[ex-meta.livejournal.com]

Three 30GB hard drives would be less than that...

Another option is a DVD-RAM drive and some 9GB cartridges.