Not to alarm you, but a possible explanation is that one of the drives is
dying or is just cantankerous.  What can happen is that the timeout (the
amount of time windows will wait for a hardware device to identify itself to
an interrogation) limit is reached, and windows boots without loading the
device driver.  Next boot, the device responds within the time limit.

One way to aggravate this situation is to have the master / slave jumpers
improperly set.
You would expect improper jumper settings to cause a fatal error every time,
but I have seen a few rare exceptions, so I would check it.

I'm very comfortable poking around inside a case, so for peace of mind, I
would check that one is the slave and the other the master, and if that is
the case, I would set one to the master and disconnect the other, and try a
few boots. Then do the same with the other drive.  You might find that one
in particular is the culprit. It may also turn out to be helpful to put them
on different ide cables.

If both boot separately, I would look in the cmos settings and see if the
ide devices on the secondary channel are at least set to auto.  If 'cdrom'
is an option set it to that. There is a lot of differences with the way cmos
functions from pc to pc, but in at least one instance I have seen, setting
this correctly has the effect of speeding the boot slightly, and that may
make a difference.  (Conversely, if I set it incorrectly it only made the
boot slower, and did not prevent the devices from being found and
recognized. Your experience may differ.)

Don't worry about losing or loading drivers after you disconnect a device,
windows will find and load the current driver when a device is reattached,
automatically when its booting.  If you don't find any suspicious hardware
gremlin you can tackle the software side of it in windows.

Tom Turak

-----Original Message-----
On Thu, 27 Sep 2001 14:57:32
Dave Williams wrote:
>Hello,
>
>On my Windows ME system my cdroms (2) do not show up in my computer list.
>Going to device manager it shows that there is a problem with the cdroms
>Both cdroms (DVD and CDwriter) are on the secondary cable. this is where
the problem lies. i have it check for update drivers (which are already
installed) and it says the best ones available are already installed. after
that i will reboot and they will be there. what could cause this and better
yet, what could fix this.
>

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