LAPTOP FORUM

I have an IBM/Lenovo X31 (XP Pro) and a LaCie external CD/DVD drive.

Recently, I bought a mobile/PDA (an O2 XDA). But when I attempted
to install Microsofts software to talk to the PDA, the install did
not work, and now the laptop will no longer use the CD drive.

Other USB devices work. When I attach the CD drive (with, for
instance, an audio CD in it), there is hard disk activity on the
laptop, and the CD spins up and the heads move about, but then
nothing at all. In particular, there is no USB Device Attached sound,
the CD drive does not appear on My Computer, and no USB Device
icon appears in the task bar.

Here is how I got to this state.

The laptop and CD Drive have worked well together for years, and I
have no reason to suspect a hardware problem.

Last night, I logged in to the laptop as administrator, attached the
CD drive and inserted the O2 CD. It was detected, and started running
a program. This said If you want to talk synchronise contacts
etc. with your PDA, you need to install Outlook. I said OK, and it
started copying things from the CD, and the progress bar reached
25% or so. Then the CD stopped. Pause. CD spins up, access light... stops.
Tiny flicker of hard disk access. Longer pause. CD spins up, access
light... stops. Then again with longer and longer pauses. Until it
simply stopped. Progress bar still at 25%, no disk activity. CD
stopped. No error message. Completely inert.

CTL-ALT-DEL to get the task manager. It lists two applications ---
the installer, and a (dormant) Roxio CD write (which is always on the
desktop, and wasnt being used). Both are unresponsive. I try
end task. Nothing happens --- in particular, the installer window
doesnt go away. Start menu no longer appears. CPU is idle,
everything has stopped.

So, from the task manager, I re-boot, and log in as Administrator. At
which point the computer resumes trying to install Outlook. But now,
there are messages about something timing out. I click retry a few
times, but I just get another message. So I try cancel... and the
installer goes dead.

So I decide to re-boot. While it is re-booting, I remove the CD
drive. Machine boots OK.... but when I re-attach the CD drive, it
doesnt mount it (see above).

After an extended burst of fiddling (plugging and unplugging the
USB, using another USB device and so forth), I did once get the
USB device attached noise for the drive --- albeit several MINUTES
after Id last detached it. And I then got it into a state where it
would play audio CDs. But the moment I put the O2 installer CD into
the system, it completely locked the machine (not even the mouse would
move) and I had to power it off.

Ive tried restoring the system to a week ago, with no change.

Ive tried booting into safe mode and removing all four (?) USB Root
hub devices, and all four (!) USB controller devices. But when I
booted back into normal mode, the system detected new hardware and
re-created all eight devices. The CD still doesnt appear.

What can have happened? How do I get XP back to using USB drives normally?

Robert.

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