First post, by Nixxel
Hi, this is my first post here so I apologise if this is in the wrong place.
I've just lost many hours of my life trying to fix an issue with my Windows 98 SE machine. The CDRom drive stopped showing in Windows, I could access it from DOS (via a win98 startup disk) and could see it in Device Manager if I booted windows into Safe Mode, but if I did a normal boot of Windows it just vanished (not in explorer, not in device manager).
I tried a LOT of different things before giving up and re-installing Windows, after I did this the CDRom returned... for a while... then it went again.
I'd run out of ideas of things to try, so my debugging skills came in to play, what was the last thing I did before the drive dematerialized? I'd installed Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition (again). I thought there's no way installing a game could cause Windows to lose a drive, but being out of options I uninstalled it and rebooted. THE DRIVE CAME BACK!
Madness!
I've tried a couple times since, installing and uninstalling the game and I can 100% reproduce the issue.
My mind is blown. Has anyone else had something like this happen? I've been gaming and coding on computers for 3 decades and I've never seen this before.