HELP: Can't access my DVD drives which have Yellow Exclamation icons in Device Mgr.

I can see my 2 IDE DVD drives at bootup via system bios but in WinXP
Pro MCE, I am unable to access them. They are identifies correctly in
Device Mgr but they have a Yellow Exclamation icon in front of them.
To make matters worse, when I plug in any of my external USB2 DVD
drives, the same this happens. Following the troubleshooting
instructions, I have uninstalled them and re-run the Add Harware
Wizard and the they are in deed found but the error message says it
cannot start the hardware for each device and that there was a problem
installing the hardware. I am at my wits end. Even worse, System
Restore had been turned off, which I can't recall doing myself, so
there is no chance of rolling back the computer to a date when
everything worked...(24hrs before). The only major system change was
replacing my SMC router with the latest Buffalo AirStation Wireless
Cable SmartRouter. Can a virus/et al cause somthing like this?
BTW, ASPI check showsup as current.
Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Arawak

 

See the article by the late Alex Nichol MVP re CD Burning in XP at
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm and go to the section on Problems.

Try using the CDGONE registry patch linked from the article and if
that doesn't work then try the DMA settings change also described in
the article.

NOTE:
You probably should fix up your System Restore first. Make certain
that it is working by running a simple test:
1. Create a new desktop shortcut (to anything)
2. Create a new manual system restore point.
3. Delete the new shortcut you created in step 1.
4. Reboot the computer
5. Run system restore and choose the restore point you created in
step 2.

If the deleted shortcut does not reappear on your desktop then you
still have problems with System Restore. See MVP Bert Kinney's System
Restore pages: http://bertk.mvps.org/index.html


Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada