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

[babysimon]

What do you need a backup device for? Can't you back up to /dev/hdaX?

[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.

[conflux.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how much help this will be but I also had problems with the amazing vanishing CD drive when installing Windows alongside Linux. I used partition magic to set up my original Windows and Linux partitions before I did anything else with my computer. The Linux partitions have always been left untouched by my Windows installs and upgrades but I have had to reinstall boot magic each time (the same would probably be true of LILO it that is what you are using). I found the way to avoid the CD drive problem was to boot the computer from my previous Win95/98/98SE boot floppy, pick the CD drive option and then run setup from the CD drive. You can run setup several times and it seems to pick up from where it left off if there is a problem. Does this help in any way?