Not recognizing cd

we have a new dell and we loaded on the Sims game for my daughter but last night when she went to play it the message was that we had to put in the cd which of course we had. What would be the cause of that and how would we fix it? I tried a music cd and it recognized it and played it. So whaddaya think?

is always a good place to start ;)

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The cd needs to be in the same drive it was installed from.

You might also do a thorough virus scan to make sure the system files are ok.

That has happened to me all too often on two different computers. The only suggetion I can give is to deinstall the drivers for the CD drive by going into the properties tab of the drive. Shut down and restart the computer. Your computer should recognize the now unknown drive and reinstall the driver. If that doesn't work, you may have a failing drive. If you find the cause, please let us know. I am curious.

The drive letter associated with the drive may have changed. (D:, E:, etc) That can happen for a variety of reasons. (When you connect a digital camera, for example, it temporarily assigns it the next available drive letter.) If you look at the properties of the shortcut you are using to launch the program, then compare it to the drive letter associated with the CD drive, make sure they are the same.

Drive letters are just nicknames for the drives, but those nicknames get embedded in shortcuts and settings files. If they change, it would exhibit these characteristics.

The music CD played because the drive is functioning properly. Playing that CD did not rely on any prior drive letter setting. But when you launch her game, it needs to find the drive on the same letter it was when it was installed.

If you can't figure it out, try uninstalling the game and then reinstalling it. That will move the settings from the old drive letter to the new one.