The Case of the Vanishing CDROM Drives

Okay this is nuts. I tried to burn a bunch of copies of a data cd for a friend of Mom's, and now both my computer and theirs doesn't register a CDROM of any sort. I started with their machine, trying to use HT Fireman (a cd burning program that was working fine last time I tried) but for some reason it wouldn't start up (illegal error, that PC has some other serious issues that just don't fsking make sense at the moment). So I hauled myself downstairs to try it on my computer, forgetting that I didn't have Fireman installed due to reformatting a bunch of times recently.

So I got the new version of Fireman which is now shareware, not freeware, and run by some crackhead company that calls itself HONESTech. *snort* If I had known that, I woulda gotten my old copy of the program off a disk I burned a while back. But whatever. Okay, so finally I got one copy of the disk. But then it wouldn't burn another copy, nor would it spit the blank CD back out for me. I had to restart the PC just to get the damn disk out. After that, my computer no longer detected a CDROM at all. I have a CDR/W but... my computer doesn't think so. Just like that. Poof, gone. It still physically works, I can stick cd's in it and get them out and the lights blink and so on, but it doesn't even show up in the list of stuff detected right at the beginning of bootup. Let alone in Windows Explorer. AARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!!!!!

Well, since I was stumped on what the hell was wrong with my PC, I ran back upstairs to try the parents' again. I uninstalled their copy of Fireman and reinstalled the old one I had saved in their downloads folder. Started the program, got settings set up to burn, only to find out that there is no longer a CDROM on my parents machine either (technically theirs is a DVDR/W but who's counting). GOD FSKING DAMMIT.

Totally weirded out by then, wondering if it was the cd I was trying to burn (virus??) or if it was some whacked out thing with HT Fireman, I went upstairs and asked Alyssa to bring up Windows Explorer on her "new" PC real quick. Heh. She has a CDROM listed there. Good. The world is not ending. Yet.

Soooooooo....... I'm gonna reformat my computer AGAIN to see if it fixes the cdrom issue. I may end up reseating every bit of hardware inside the case too (I already tried reseating the CDROM wires, no good, and my network card wasn't happy on the next reboot but at least THAT fixed itself after a reseating). GRR FSKING GRR GRRR GRRRRRRR. I don't want to reformat. Again. And I don't see how it will fix things since the CDR isn't being detected on bootup. But it's the only thing I can think of. Beyond taking the CDR out and putting my old CDROM back in. It doesn't have burning capabilities... but at least it doesn't try to have a fsking affair with my floppy drive (which is a whole other story: some weird hardware conflict between the CDR and the floppy since I installed the CDR... it can lock the system up solid... especially if I try to copy files from floppy to my zip drive... yet Windows detects no conflicts).

Edit: (11pm Monday Sept 26) Gee I thought this didn't even post, because my internet went out as soon as (or I thought before) I hit the submit button. My network card is still not happy... but I haven't booted my PC up since yetserday, I spent all day today attempting to sleep through a migraine. Ergh.. stress... Bleh. Well anyways if you don't see me online for a while, I'm having severe PC issues. >(