Lost CD Drives in Windows 98se

Inexplicably, when I try to read a CD, I will find that one or both of my CD drives will be lost. The drive won't read the disk and then when I explore My Computer or enter the device manager, it doesn't even show up. I have a TDK CDRW drive which I installed and a resident CD-ROM drive. At times one or both won't be recognized. There are also periods when I don't have any problems at all. My hard drive and my CDRW are both set to DMA. The CDROM is not. On both CD drives the 'disconnect' box on the settings panel is checked. (I don't know what that is) I've tried removing the CDRW drive from the system and then reinstalling the driver. (I thought that fixed it but the problem popped up again) I don't have any packet writing software running. I'm running Windows 98se with an Intel Celeron processor and chipset.

If more info is needed to help me troubleshoot the problem I'll be happy to provide it. The intermittentness of this problem is what is so aggravating, I can't pin down what makes it happen

 

can you see them in the bios

 

'in the bios' ? I check for them by exploring my computer and by checking the device manager. What I havent checked is to see if my secondary IDE controller is working when the probelm is occurring. My skill level should be classified as 'knowing just enough to screw up real bad' but I'm learning. I guess I should mention that a restart always seems to fix the problem

 

if you cannot see them in the bios, you will not and windows will not see them could be a faulty or loose eide cable or a faulty power connection if you have a spare power plug swap it over

 

I've got the cover off now and I'll check them but this problem is new. I went for months without any difficulties. I've just done a major cleanup, removing a lot of programs and files that were unused. I'm thinking this may be a software related problem

 

not unless you deleted any system files
in the run box type
sfc
and press enter and it will check the system files

 

I ran sfc and had problems with 2 files
Msisys.vxd
sysres.dll

 

has it fixed the problem

 

Forceaspi.. http://radified.com/ASPI/forceaspi.htm