HDD That Thinks It's A DVD Drive!

[PMRiley]

I thought I had seen or read about most of the peculiar things that can happen in Windows, but I really am puzzled about this one!

My trusty desktop PC that has been running in it's current configuration for over a year without problems has suddenly decided that the slave HD is actually a DVD drive and Windows installs the drivers for an AXC(???) DVD drive and refuses to find any files on the drive.

This is now the 2nd time that Windows has made my HD into a DVD drive (This machine stays switched on 24/7 until the auto updates force a reboot).

All I need to do to fix the problem is to uninstall the drivers for the DVD drive and re-initialise the HD in Drive Manager and the drive works again as if nothing has happened (No file lost / corrupted etc)

I know how to fix the problem - But can anyone suggest a way to prevent it from hapenning again???

Thanks in advance.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Certain programs such as nero have an option for creating what you call an image drive. What this does is take a cd and copy it onto the hard drive and mark it as it were another drive. The only thing I can figure out is your hard drive got disc imaged. Could be wrong but thats the only thing I can think of.

 

[BadBigBen]

1.) after such updates, do not WARM-START the PC (reboot) but powerdown and let sit for a few minutes... if it happens then it surely is a badly written software on the PC that is causing this... ie. CD/DVD burning Software (Alcohol? Nero? etc.)...

2.) is the drive recognized correctly in the BIOS, or does the BIOS get rewritten, I have seen this personally on my system, albeit it was set as another HDD instead... VIRUS related... Do a complete Malware scan (Spyware and Virus/Trojan)...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[linney]

Are you running a program called GoBack or similar as that has been known to do funny things with hard drive identification?

To GoBack or SystemRestore !
thread779-928674

Adding 2nd hard drive to XP Pro
thread779-1114937

 

[PMRiley]

There's no 'funny' progs like GoBack or anything on the system, due to it's age and lack of HD space I haven't installed anything new on it over the last few months (Mainly use it for web surfing these days).

I run spyware / adbot checking progs (Adaware, Spybot etc) at least once a week and have anti virus software and nothing gets detected, I also run the Trend Micro onlive virus scanner every so often as a double check.

I do have Nero (v5.5) installed, but very rarely use it and I certainly haven't used it since the last time this problem occurred.

The HD is recognised by the BIOS correctly all of the time (Although there is an unrelated problem with the BIOS not recognising the FDD if there is no floppy in the drive but that is something else altogether)

Thanks for all the suggestions though - Keep em coming, I would really like to prevent this!

 

[BadBigBen]

I run spyware / adbot checking progs (Adaware, Spybot etc) at least once a week and have anti virus software and nothing gets detected, I also run the Trend Micro onlive virus scanner every so often as a double check.

Yep, that is what I had at that time running aswell, including the EWIDO background scanner... My PC went down, Ewido caught 3 programs that where about to get changed, neither my AntiViral software nor MS AntiSpyware cameup to warn me, and the PC went AWOL anyways...


Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."