cd-rom and cd-rw are not accessible most of the time

O.K. I'm having a similar problem to many other people here. My CD-ROM and CD-RW won't work about 95% of the time. They either both work, or both do not work(usually do not). They are recognized as working properly in the Device Manager every time though. Removing them will cause the computer to detect them at the next start-up, however they STILL do not work when I try to use them. I get the message E:/ drive is not accessible, the device not ready. Occasionally they do work, but it is very rare and completely random as far as I can tell. Also, I tried to set the read ahead option to off (no read ahead) but that didn't help me at all. I'm clueless and need help. Thanks.

 

Need a few more details to help:

are they both on the same cable?
are they on the secondary channel?
are the jumpers set right?
does one work ok on it's own ?
does the other work ok on it's own?
have you tried another cable?
is the power connector ok?

 

Thanks for the reply. Here are the answers to your questions as best as I know.....well, I'm not sure hehe. It's a Compaq Presario 7598 that's just under a year old, has a 600Mhz chip, 128Mg ram, and no one has done anything as far as taking it apart, so the jumpers were set by the factory. A compaq service person did replace the CD-RW about 2 months after the computer was purchased, but the drives have been fine since then. The drives come and go in tandem; they both work or don't work. Nothing has been done to the computer on the hardware side by me, so everything is the same as it was when both the drives were functioning normally. I hope you have an answer, because it makes no sense to me. The only thing that has been done recently that I can think of is attempts to download the latest patch from EverQuest (which also isn't working, but for other reasons I'm sure). Thanks again for your help.

 

Well, the intermittent problem is pretty much a constant problem now. The CD-ROM hasn't worked for weeks. I am, however, able to burn CDs on the CD-RW. If I select run from the start menu, now only one CD unit shows up, the CD-RW. It's now assigned the E:\ drive, which before was the CD-ROM. Is it possible the CD-ROM has been disconnected? Like I said before, nobody has opened the tower. I find it hard to believe that the life expectancy of a CD-ROM is one year, but that's just my luck. After all, just a few days after I submitted this thread, the site crashed....Any help is still greatly appreciated. Thanks.