Where have my drives gone??

[spicychicken]

Hi everyone,

I have turned on my computer today and my CD-ROM Drive (D) & my Re-writer drive (e) have disappeared from my computer. There are the yellow exclamation marks against primary & secondary ultra ATA Controllers in Device Manager. I have checked all connections & I've tried updating the drivers from my motherboard CD-ROMS but cannot reinstall as the CD is not recognised. I have tried windows update also. Has anyone got any clue as to what the problem could be & how to resolve this.
Many Thanks

[HAL9000]

If everything was normal yesterday, and not today, and you haven't changed any configurations, do a virus scan with the latest virus definitions, or go to http://housecall.antivirus.com for a free online scan.

[GaryRouth]

If the virus scan doesn't come up with anything...

I seem to remember something like this from a few years ago. Seems like a
power surge had whacked a SiS chipset mainboard around. I think we fixed it
by removing the IDE controllers in Device Manager, which forced Win98 to scan
all the devices and prompt for re-installing the drivers.

But darn, that was quite a while back... So you might want to wait till someone
who has seen this more recently (or knows better!) to post with more info.

...Hmmm, now that I think of it, you don't really need to try that hocus-pocus
trick... If you have a bootable floppy around, you should be able to boot from
that, and it will use standard IDE and Cd drivers on the floppy long enough for
you to reinstall from your regular installation disks....

Am I rememberng anything right tonight, Hal? By Golly, I don't usually post
when I'm this tired... (well, OK, sometimes I do)
...Gary

[morriswindgate]

If you have an AMD processor, reinstall your 4 in 1 drivers by going to www.viatech.com and downloading them to your desktop and running them from there. What happened was you went to Windows Update and it said that there was an update for the Intel IDE driver (lesson for the future, Never ever download drivers from Windows Update) which is included with the windows disk. When it installed to Zapped your via drivers.