The folder with questions about CD drives of all sorts - plain, with DVD, with rewrite capabilities - has been filling up again. Such as:
My computer refuses to recognize the CD-ROM drive.
The device's driver probably was corrupted or deleted.
To reinstall the driver, go to Windows' Control Panel by clicking on Start, then Settings, then Control Panel.
Click on the System icon, then on the Device Manager tab.
Look for the reference to CD-ROM devices, and click on the plus sign to the left of the line.
A new line, listing your CD player, will open. Highlight the reference to your device.
Click on the Remove button. Answer "yes" when Windows asks whether you are sure you want to do so.
Exit Windows, shut down and reboot the computer.
Windows should spot the drive and react as if it had just been added. A wizard will pop up and guide you through the reinstallation of the driver.
If you installed the drive yourself, check the drive's manual. It may recommend an alternate way of installing the driver.
The PC stopped recognizing my CD-ROM drive after I updated the driver.
Go back to the site from which you downloaded the driver and double-check that you downloaded the right version for your system. Vendors often post different drivers for different operating systems.
If you installed the right upgrade, the problem may be that there are residual traces of your old driver in Windows' system files.
Remove the CD-ROM drive from Device Manager, as noted above.
Go through Windows' system files - most notably the Registry - to remove all references to the player and its driver. If you don't know how, ask your PC manufacturer's tech support to walk you through the process.
An alternative is to use Norton CleanSweep to do the job.
The cleansing done, reinstall your updated driver.
I bought a program that was supposed to help me use the capabilities of my CD-RW, but the program can't access the drive.
You may have to update the computer's BIOS or the drive's driver.
If the drive is connected to an SCSI controller card, you may have to update the driver for the card. The program and your specific drive may be incompatible. Check the program's Readme file for a list of drives the program is likely to snub.
I installed the player as a substitute for the one that came with the PC and followed all the directions, but I can't get the drive to work.
Make sure the plastic connectors on both ends of the gray cable running between the drive and the motherboard are seated firmly.
More important, check the orientation of the two connectors.
Your player's receptacle has two rows of male pins.
One of those pins is the P1 pin and sits on one end of the receptacle. The side of the peripheral's receptacle that houses this crucial pin is the one closest to the receptacle for the power cord.
The gray cable's plastic connector designed to fit into the player is female.
It must be situated so that the opening designated to hold the P1 pin faces the pin.
How can you identify that special opening? It is on the side of the cable that has a long, thin, red line or marking along the edge.
Short version: Plug the cable into the drive so that the marked side faces the power jack.
The same orientation must be observed in plugging the gray cable to the controller on the motherboard.
If you are lucky, the motherboard's vendor labeled the P1.
The power cord, meanwhile, plugs into the drive only one way - but it is easy to forget to connect it, or to seat it firmly in its jack.
If the CD-ROM you installed does not connect directly to the motherboard, but to the cable that also leads to the hard drive, you may have an additional problem: You may not have set the player's jumpers to turn it into a slave, or secondary, drive.