catch-22 (disappearing cd drive)

[Tuor]

I just ran into an unfortunate situation. Attempted to update firmware for a new Pacific Digital CDRW drive, which appeared to work, along with a recommendation to reboot. After reboot my CD drive was not visible to XP. Tried a number of non-destructive
probes (CD drive still visible from BIOS; can *boot* from CD; etc.) and concluded problem was XP-related software, and not a problem with the drive itself or the motherboard.

Perhaps foolishly, I then decided to do a repair install of XP to fix whatever had happened. The process is: boot from XP install CD, run the repair install, reboot to disk-based system to continue install, BUT that disk-resident system still cannot see t
he CD drive and, hence, cannot complete the repair install. An attempt to boot regularly invokes the repair install system. Catch-22.

Now I am stuck mid-way into a repair install. Also, now I see that using the device manager to remove the CD driver, then rebooting might have been a wiser choice. Alas.

Can one of you XP experts suggest a path out of this swamp? Is there a way to abort the pending repair install? Other steps?

Much appreciation for your good suggestions,

- Tuor



For the record: ASUS A7V (Athlon@900) with 768MB, 60GB Maxtor, Pacific Digital 52x24x52x CDRW, etc. running WinXP for past 15 months

[Midnight]

Have you tried pressing F8 and see if you get advanced options to boot from.
This might allow you to roll back. I doubt it but it's worth a try. Also try
rebooting from the CD Rom and either restore the Cd drive bios if you made a
backup or have an earlier version or try running system restore from the cd.
I think restoring the Cd bios would be the best way to go. Then continue the
update. A few things for you to try. If you didn't make a backup when you
updated the cd firmware try and download an earlier one from the manufactuer
or repost with exact make and model and firmware you are using and someone
might have an earlier version. Obviously be very carefull accepting a file
from an unknown source but it might be the only thing you can do.

Midnight


"Tuor" > wrote in message
...
> I just ran into an unfortunate situation. Attempted to update firmware
for a new Pacific Digital CDRW drive, which appeared to work, along with a
recommendation to reboot. After reboot my CD drive was not visible to XP.
Tried a number of non-destructive probes (CD drive still visible from BIOS;
can *boot* from CD; etc.) and concluded problem was XP-related software, and
not a problem with the drive itself or the motherboard.
>
> Perhaps foolishly, I then decided to do a repair install of XP to fix
whatever had happened. The process is: boot from XP install CD, run the
repair install, reboot to disk-based system to continue install, BUT that
disk-resident system still cannot see the CD drive and, hence, cannot
complete the repair install. An attempt to boot regularly invokes the
repair install system. Catch-22.
>
> Now I am stuck mid-way into a repair install. Also, now I see that using
the device manager to remove the CD driver, then rebooting might have been a
wiser choice. Alas.
>
> Can one of you XP experts suggest a path out of this swamp? Is there a
way to abort the pending repair install? Other steps?
>
> Much appreciation for your good suggestions,
>
> - Tuor
>
>
>
> For the record: ASUS A7V (Athlon@900) with 768MB, 60GB Maxtor, Pacific
Digital 52x24x52x CDRW, etc. running WinXP for past 15 months
>