I'm assuming you don't have XP...so reboot the computer, and press the F8 key a couple of times after the first black and white boot screen leaves...Choose SAFEMODE from the menu that appears. You might have to experiment with when you press F8 to get it right because many times you will be a hair too late to get the menu. If so, just reboot and try it again.
When you get to safemode, go to Device Mgr and click the plus marks in front of the CDROM, the DISK DRIVES, and the FLOPPY/HARD DISK CONTROLLERS.
Anything that has a duplicate entry listed should be removed as well as the original (so that windows doesn't install a duplicate again as new hardware when you reboot).
Once these items are corrected/removed, reboot the computer to normal windows, and see if your stuff is working now, with only one entry for each item now.
TONI
I have tried a couple of time to post my problem onto these forum boards but I have not received any useful advice so I am trying again. If no-one can help me I would rather they just say so rather than it could be that the CD drive maybe old or need cleaning - this is not the case!
The problem that I have is concerning my CD drives. I have a Packard Bell computer and the first drive came with the computer and is a Goldstar CD-Rom-CRD-8240B and the second I installed a couple of years ago and is a Toshiba DVD-Rom SD-R1002. The problem is that neither of these drives seem to be reading any of the files on the CD's that I place into them. All that occurs when I click onto 'my computer' is that it shows that there are no documents when there clearly are.
What I have done so far is firstly to clean the drives with a multimedia laser lens cleaner. Then I installed new drivers from them by using drivers-guide.com. I even deleted the drives from from the settings device manager in the hope that the computer would recognise
them on re-booting and ask whether I wanted to install them but this wasn't the case and for some reason they were still there on rebooting. When I looked in the settings device manager again it showed them as still being there.
There also appear to be 4 letter drives d,e,f&g when there are only two. I know that this maybe causing the conflict but how do I rectify it?
When the Toshiba drive is attempting to be read whether in 'my computer' or internet explorer etc it just hangs.
Someone may suggest that I should reinstall them from the Windows CD's that I have. The problem is that since this is a Packard Bell computer, this would reformat the hard drive. I have far, far, far too
much stuff on there to do this.
Any real and useful help (rather than the usual it maight be or or or or or) would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.

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