DVD Drives Dissapeared... [Windows Update]

[Jam_Master_K]

Sorry to bother you all, but i wonder would anybody be able to help me out with a problem i have encountered.

Last night I carried out a Windows Update, and i installed all the software updates that were available. However i also noticed that there was a hardware update available too. I decided to install the update as i thought it must be a better driver or something similar.

The updates were "VIA - Storage - Primary IDE Channel" & "VIA - Storage - Secondary IDE Channel". I have no idea what these updates were as there was very little information on them.

When i rebooted my computer, both my DVD drive and DVD-RW drives were missing. They were nowhere to be seen in explorer and when i inserted a dvd nothing happened.

I eventually figured out that it must be the update, but i could not find a way to uninstall it.

It seems a lot of people are having problems with these 'VIA Storage' updates and lots of peoples computers won't even startup after the update.

Then i eventually figured out that maybe i needed to rollback the driver on the IDE channels. I did this on the primary IDE channel, in the device manager, and to my joy, the DVD drives re-appeared, and are in full working order.

Then i tried to rollback the secondary IDE channel and it tells me that 'no driver files have been backed up for this device'. So i am unable to change it. It has an exclamation mark on its logo in 'Device Manager' and when you click it, the message that is displayed is: 'This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31) Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.'

So, as i see it, i think i have undone the damage the "VIA - Storage - Primary IDE Channel" update caused, however i have not addressed the other update.

Everything seems to be running fine now but i am wondering, could it cause problems in the future?

So if anybody has any advice i would be terribly grateful. Oh, and i have a few more short questions...

• What exactly is an IDE channel?
• Would my computer definetly have a secondary IDE channel, and if so does it mean that its not functioning now that this update has been installed?
• Or could windows update just have installed the driver without me having a secondary IDE channel, as when i disable the secondary channel, everything on the computer seems to work fine still.
• If anybody knows of any other, or better, way to undo the damage, i would be delighted to hear it, as i have very little knowledge of this area.

 

[Jam_Master_K]

Well i decided to uninstal and reinstall the hardware, but it kept installing it with the 'VIA' driver, which is not the right driver for my secondary IDE channel.

So i decided to have a look in the 'system32' folder for the VIA driver. Once i found it i backed it up and deleted it. Uninstalled the hardware again and rebooted and everything is working good again now. It installed it properly with the proper manufacturers driver.

Just thought i would post this info, in case anybody has a similar problem in future.

 

[raybay]

Thank you for posting what you learned, as we can all benefit. Those kinds of errors become great mysteries... it is to your credit that you worked it out so thoroughly.