CDROM driver HOSED

[Foosinho]

OK, I've got a pretty serious driver problem in WindowsXP I can't seem to figure out how to resolve.

My wife got a new digital camera. When I went to install the EasyShare software, it failed to install. Following the tips on the Kodak site, I downloaded a little app that cleans up any install cruft, and lets you restart fresh. I ran that app, and rebooted.

No more DVD/CDROM drive. Windows claims the driver is missing or corrupted. I try to search for an updated driver, and it claims no newer drivers exist. When I delete the drive from device manager and try to reinstall it after a reboot, same problem. Sony (the drive manufacturer) does not have downloadable drivers.

What the frack am I supposed to do about this? I can't even insert my Windows XP disk to try and fix the problem!

[nsa]

... What the frack am I supposed to do about this? I can't even insert my Windows XP disk to try and fix the problem!
Ahhh. The joys of Micro$oft.

If you have the XP installation CD, then you can configure the system SETUP to boot from the CD and use the repair option. I'm not sure if the same thing will work using the OEM installation disk.

G'luck.

[Grouchy]

I know this might be painful but can you mount a network share with the required device driver or settings? or a USB drive?

Maybe remove the physical drive and replace it with a different cdrom/dvdrom then switch back once it recognizes something? Or maybe move it from primary to slave to trigger a hardware change and recognition? Or move it to a different IDE channel.

[Foosinho]

I know this might be painful but can you mount a network share with the required device driver or settings? or a USB drive?
This I can do. I have a SMB server with 1.5TB of space. Unfortunately, that machine doesn't have a CD drive. I'll have to rip it from the laptop and push it over the wireless to the server, and then set up the share.

[negativetouch]

This is really spooky because I almost PM'd you and Grouchy for help with my computer at home. Started getting a bad graphics card driver message--downloaded a new driver but now I'm blue screening. The interesting part is we also have Kodak Easy Share.

[Foosinho]

Resolved. Wasn't pretty. Popped in the XP CD and rebooted, brought up the install, and tried a "Repair". Everything went swimmingly, it rebooted into Windows, brought up the setup screens - and then I got stuck. It was still claiming I had no CD drive, and it didn't copy the drivers over necessary to access the drive in Windows. So now I've got a *completely* worthless computer.

So I did the only option left to me - I reinstalled Windows. Ugh. Now I've got to start digging thru all my boxes of stored computer stuff looking for install CDs for all my software again.

I did manage to get the EasyShare software installed without a problem.

I tell ya, if (a) I could get my wife to abandon Office for OpenOffice (she's already a FF user, and she exclusively uses webmail to access my mail server) and (b) I knew for certain I could download pictures off of our two digital cameras, I'd probably jettison my sole remaining Windows installation (other than my work laptop) and go with Ubuntu, full-time.