My PC does not recognize my disk drives

[trains are bad]

Holy **** i can't even do anything. I open up windows explorer and there is nothing there. Both my Cd-rw and cd drives are gone.

[UltimatePaintballer]

if nothing shows up then how are you on ao?

[trains are bad]

I don't need my cd drives to surf AO :rolleyes:

[Timmee]

Holy **** i can't even do anything. I open up windows explorer and there is nothing there. Both my Cd-rw and cd drives are gone.

How old is your computer? Did you recently do any work to it? Check your BIOS to make sure that the settings are still correct. Also, check/replace your drive cable(s).

If neither of those work, it might be more serious.

[Dryden]

What version of Windows?

[xsiled]

this could be one of quite a few things.

A. erroronous windows installation or corupted since install
B. dead motherboard IDE
C. dieing power supply unit

D. you were messing with it and forgot to attach all the ide or molex cables :D

[MarkM]

Dying CMOS battery...it has caused the bios to forget what is installed, you will have to go into the bios and auto detect each section of the ide channels and the real givaway if this is the case of the battery is that your clock is probably wrong too as is the date, if they are ok then you have a chance of recovery, but given that the CMOS battery is a couple of $'s then open the case emove the battery and replace and then do the bios dance and all will be good....what windows version you have will not make any difference with a dying battery. Loose cabling can do this but very unlikely, unless you are constantly moving the PC for LAN partys the odds are way high against this being the cause. CMOS batterys only last from a few weeks in new pc's up to a couple of years but the panic they cause is huge.
As for IE being empty this could be due to the cache not being refreshed and or spyware also, if you do mean WINDOWS Explorer then this is due to the bios being confused as to what is installed (bios) , if you haven't already got any spyware removers get Adaware or Spybot and run them after you have fixed the bios, as this will ensure you don't have any spyware installed be careful though as both programs often identify programs that windows needs to run so delete with caution...if you have done it correctly the first time you can set either program to ignore the programs it keeps highlighting.