Hi all. I'm certainly not a techy and this is my first post, so please bear with me.

I have a pretty new Toshiba Sat Pro M40 (Service Pack 2, XP) which came with a MASHITA DVD-RAM UJ-841S multi drive. Unfortunately my warranty has just expired! I had hardly used the drive and downloaded the most recent beta version of Burrrn so that I could burn some WAV files to CDR's for the first time. The program asked for a writer, and when I looked on Explorer, my CD/DVD drive had disappeared.

In Device Manager I had the yellow exclamation mark and in Properties the message "Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupt or missing. (Code 39)" was displayed.

I have looked into this, tried the troubleshooting (searching for updated drivers etc...) and then sought advice from an IT expert friend.

The upshot is that he thinks I have to back up my files and restore the OS etc.. from the recovery CD that came with the laptop.

Really unhappy about this and my concern is that if I download Burrrn again once I have rebuilt the machine, the same thing will happen again. I wanted to use Burrrn as opposed to other burning programs but may not be able to. I just wondered if anyone else has experienced this problem (Sat Pro M40 users or otherwise). Many thanks.

Try uninstalling the device in Windows, and then rebooting. AFAIK, that should force the OS to detect and recognize it again.

I doubt Burrrn is the reason for the problem though - it could have existed before you discovered it.

Also, I have 2 Toshiba laptops myself. While you won't get a free repair, they usually agree to help you as much as they can over the phone.

One more thing: laptops FAIL a lot sooner than desktops usually do for a variety of off-topic reasons, and the cost of repairs can easily rival the cost of the machine itself. I found this out the hard way after I blew nearly a $1000 on fixes for my first Toshiba, which had a multitude of problems after 2.5 years of life and a 1 year warranty. On my 2nd Toshiba, I got the whole nine yards. Since then, I've had both the HDD and the system board (lightning strike, no fault of Toshiba's) replaced (essentially the same repairs needed for the first machine) all for free. This is why I always advise that laptop buyers max out the warranty option.

Have you tried Windows "system restore" feature?

http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org/how_do_i_...to_recognis.htm

I'd recommend trying the last part first, the Upper/Lower filter stuff. CD burning software/ripping can sometimes mess with this.

It might be worth using the device manager to delete all of the directly connected optical and hard drive units from your device tree and then delete the IDE controllers they were connected to. This won't cause currently in use units to be pulled off line.

Then reboot, and it will re-detect all of them. Perhaps the optical drive will re-appear.

-brendan

That's what I was suggesting, albeit in much less detail. Thanks for fleshing it out.

Thought that might be what you were saying. Just wanted to make sure drummerboy took care of both the drive device(s) and the controller, since that particular fix (regardless of whether it applies here) requires the controller to be rerecognized as well.

-brendan

Thanks very much david_dl. This worked. Thanks very much also to everyone who took the time to reply and your helpful comments.

I had previously tried the troubleshooting in Device Manager which included uninstalling the device, although this didn't work. However, to be fair I don't recall this taking me through the steps that bhoar suggested.