Help Unlocking D-Drive

[Frazzled]

I have this unique problem. Now mind you it has been heard of but by very few unfortunate souls like myself. Here's the problem. One day many moons ago I went to go play a CD in my CD ROM and an error message came up saying "D drive is unaccessible....locked by a disk Utility" So now not only does my CD not work, but anything that I had stored in my D-Drive ie:DVD Player and other things. The computer does not even acknowledge that I even have a D-Drive. I cannot scan it for viruses or anything because as far as my computer is concerned it doesn't even exist. This all happened after a hacker got into my system. Now I have no idea if there is any correlation there but I thought I should mention it. Any details I can give in order for someone to help me with this most discouraging problem I will state. Also when I go to look at the properties of my D-Drive it says in there that there is absolutely no memory left in there. The whole grid is blue. Now again I am not sure if it is reading that way because the computer doesn't think I have a D-Drive or what. If there is anyone out there who could shed some light on unlocking that D-Drive so that it is operable again I would be extremely appreciative. As it is I cannot load any software or anything because of this problem. Thanks in advance for any help available and given to me by you.........Thanks :)

[RWSchlatter]

well - J don't think this is exactly a Registry question.

Did you ever try to go to the Device Manager (you didn't mentin the Window OS, so J cannot help you now to open it), and from there Remove the drive that otherwise is not recognized ? You may have to look thru the list of devices to see what (if anything) is mapped to drive D:.

J would expect that at next boot plug-and-play would rediscover this unit and you would live on happily ever after. Have the driver disk ready if asked for. Maybe even a good chance to install the most current driver version as distrbuted by the manufacturer.

Hope this helps.

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Regards - Richard

[Frazzled]

Thanks for the advice RW....however it wasn't of much use to me.....but I appreciated the time given to suggest it.....and yes I have gone to device manager and found what version and the name of my CDROM.....however it will say there is a problem with this device and windows does not know why.....so back to square one....I even tried installing a totally new CDROM....and it doesn't recognize that....I cannot reinstall windows if anything is corrupt because the CD does not rotate....in otherwords this thing is a mess...hehe....make that a total mess.....thanks again for your help.....one day if I ever figure it out or have a professional tinker with it I will let you know what the problem was so we all can get a big laugh.....
~F~

[RWSchlatter]

just a thought - you mention that the cd does not even rotate - did you check within CMOS setup, if it needs some special settings there ?
(and a nasty thing - is your hardware wiring ok ?)

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Regards - Richard

[Frazzled]

:) Ummmmm.....nope I do not reckon that I will even go there....For many reasons the most severe being I'd probably get the same effects if I hurled the PC out the window into my pool :)....If I were that advanced and knew about that sort of thing.....I think my name would be Richard :).... No seriously though....I am so computer illiterate that it isn't even funny......Know very little about it actually....and something like that would just be a little too over my head.....But again a million thanks just the same....I think I will let the pro's handle this one.....Something has got to give....Thanks Richard.....bye now
~F~

[RWSchlatter]

"...I am so computer illiterate that it isn't even funny..."
well, you mentioned that you switched hardware, so you can't be such a beginner.

"...nope I do not reckon that I will even go there..."
Don't be afraid of CMOS settings. In first place it's only a set of data for the BIOS program.
At least you should once go into it and look at the data stored there.
You can always leave without modifying the settings, just take care of the question asked when you leave the menu (usually with the ESC key).
Depending on the BIOS manufacturer, some of the CMOS entries have to do with controlling machine electronics and the CPU, better not change any of those. But certain entries will allow you to activate and deactivate general hardware features. Maybe your cdrom just needs to be triggered by some setting there.


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Regards - Richard