My ASUS Optical Drive just vanished from Windows 7? Please help!

[bal1985]

I was going to burn a DVD for a friend when I noticed my ASUS BW-12B1ST Optical Drive was no longer listed? It's always been there. Under "Driver & Tools" I see only "ASUS E-Green Utility Version 1.01.41" which I already have installed. When I open E-Green I get this error, "No ASUS Drive is Active!". I'm on Windows 7 64bit.

This is what I see in My Computer, only my SSD, HDD and Flash Drive. The BR Drive no longer shows?

I don't know when the drive vanished? I just installed ConvertXToDVD a minute ago, placed a DVD in to burn but ConvertXToDVD couldn't burn the video because there was no drive.

Please help as I just built this PC, my first. I have an SSD and a HDD, yesterday I woke up and everything on the HDD was wiped, nothing left. I don't know what the hell is going on but I'd really like to fix this BR Drive issue.

Maybe I erased something by mistake with CCleaner? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[cluberti]

Reboot and go into the system BIOS - make sure it's listed there. If not, recheck/reconnect power and data cables, and see if it shows up in the BIOS at that point.

If it shows up there but not in Windows, that's a different set of steps, but we need to know the BIOS can see the drive first (because if it's not visible there, you will want to try new cables for power and/or data that are known-good, or replace the drive with a known-working one to test).

 

[bal1985]

Reboot and go into the system BIOS - make sure it's listed there. If not, recheck/reconnect power and data cables, and see if it shows up in the BIOS at that point.

If it shows up there but not in Windows, that's a different set of steps, but we need to know the BIOS can see the drive first (because if it's not visible there, you will want to try new cables for power and/or data that are known-good, or replace the drive with a known-working one to test).

How do I get into BIOS? My buddy basically built it for me. I'm not to tech savy. I did open the PC up and it seems the cables are connected. The BR drive light flashes when I put a DVD in and it also opens and closes.

My ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 motherboard has an application called ASRock A-Tuning. I clicked on the Live Update tab and it says there is an update for my BIOS, my current is 1.30 and the latest is 1.70.

 

[cluberti]

How do I get into BIOS? My buddy basically built it for me. I'm not to tech savy. I did open the PC up and it seems the cables are connected. The BR drive light flashes when I put a DVD in and it also opens and closes.

On an ASRock motherboard, it's usually by pressing DEL during the preboot POST that the BIOS does before it tries to boot Windows. Generally you'll also see text stating "Press <key> to enter setup", in which case press that key it mentions repeatedly until you do enter BIOS setup. Read the manual for how to get into the BIOS menus and what's in there if you don't know what you're doing just yet.

My ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 motherboard has an application called ASRock A-Tuning. I clicked on the Live Update tab and it says there is an update for my BIOS, my current is 1.30 and the latest is 1.70.

BIOS updates are generally only recommended when you're having an issue that an update specifically fixes, although I usually don't like being more than 2 versions behind if I can avoid it. It might make sense to update the BIOS in this case if you're that behind in this case.

As to the picture, it looks like something has messed with the upper/lower filters of the drive in the registry - it might make sense to uninstall all of the ASRock utilities from the system, and then delete the drive itself from device manager. Reboot and see if it comes back.

 

[bal1985]

How do I get into BIOS? My buddy basically built it for me. I'm not to tech savy. I did open the PC up and it seems the cables are connected. The BR drive light flashes when I put a DVD in and it also opens and closes.

On an ASRock motherboard, it's usually by pressing DEL during the preboot POST that the BIOS does before it tries to boot Windows. Generally you'll also see text stating "Press <key> to enter setup", in which case press that key it mentions repeatedly until you do enter BIOS setup. Read the manual for how to get into the BIOS menus and what's in there if you don't know what you're doing just yet.

My ASRock Z97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 motherboard has an application called ASRock A-Tuning. I clicked on the Live Update tab and it says there is an update for my BIOS, my current is 1.30 and the latest is 1.70.

BIOS updates are generally only recommended when you're having an issue that an update specifically fixes, although I usually don't like being more than 2 versions behind if I can avoid it. It might make sense to update the BIOS in this case if you're that behind in this case.

As to the picture, it looks like something has messed with the upper/lower filters of the drive in the registry - it might make sense to uninstall all of the ASRock utilities from the system, and then delete the drive itself from device manager. Reboot and see if it comes back.

Delete ASRock utl? Why? The issue is the ASUS BR drive.

 

[cluberti]

No, the issue is something has messed with the registry filters for the CD/DVD optical drives. Unless you have something else installed that would be doing that (daemon tools, DVD software, etc), I can't think of anything else but to get to stock Windows without any add-on or cruft before troubleshooting further.

 

[bal1985]

No, the issue is something has messed with the registry filters for the CD/DVD optical drives. Unless you have something else installed that would be doing that (daemon tools, DVD software, etc), I can't think of anything else but to get to stock Windows without any add-on or cruft before troubleshooting further.

A guy on Reddit posted this link: The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that is running Windows Vista

He said my issue was pretty "common". I deleted the UpperFilters & UpperFilters in RegEdit like in Step 3-7. Anything I should do now or any idea why this happened? Was it something I installed? I mean I've had this newly built PC for about a month and this is the first time it happend. It just seems strange that once I installed Burning Software program, this happens.

 

[cluberti]

My crystal ball is in the shop, but in general that error is due to registry corruption or filters in the registry pointing to nonexistant or malfunctioning software other than the drivers for the drive itself. However, I can't say with 100% certainty why it happened because that's impossible, but I can say why it usually happens, and yes, that's (registry filters) what I'm talking about.

 

[bal1985]

My crystal ball is in the shop, but in general that error is due to registry corruption or filters in the registry pointing to nonexistant or malfunctioning software other than the drivers for the drive itself. However, I can't say with 100% certainty why it happened because that's impossible, but I can say why it usually happens, and yes, that's (registry filters) what I'm talking about.

I don't know what reg corruption means? Can you explain to a novice user what your talking about please? Also, are there any steps I should take to make sure it doesn't happen again or is there a checklist I can go through?

Example, you told me to update my BIOS, should I still do that? Anything else I should do?

And about updating the BIOS, I've read that it could lead to worse things to updating it doesn't always turn out well, that a noob, like me could brick the mobo?

And I do appreciate your help on this matter, thank you.

 

[cluberti]

Any time you're writing to (normally) Read-Only Memory, yes, there's a risk of bricking. This is usually caused by losing power nowadays, so you do take a tiny risk when updating a system without a backup ROM to make sure you don't lose power.

 

[bal1985]

Any time you're writing to (normally) Read-Only Memory, yes, there's a risk of bricking. This is usually caused by losing power nowadays, so you do take a tiny risk when updating a system without a backup ROM to make sure you don't lose power.

Your not answering my question, I understand there are risks. I'm however, asking you, the veteran here at these forums, if I should update the BIOS or stay put? Knowing what you know now from my previous posts in this thread, do you think the benefits outweigh the risks? Especially coming from a novice like me who has never dealt with updating a BIOS. You also said that you only usually the BIOS if the latest updates change log has one of your computers issues listed. Well, my ASRock motherboard website doesn't give very much detail on what the update fixes and if I would benefit from it.

Most importantly, was this Optical Drive "peek-a-boo" a random issue or could there be something else sitting and waiting to strike again, some error in the build of my PC?

I told you I followed the directions in that Windows Help link I posted previously, but I don't see how deleting two items in the registry simply fixes this and the drive just re-appears again? I doubt I fixed the issue for good, I'm guessing I just did a band-aid fix.

 

[TVeblen]

Do not update the BIOS at this time. It is an extreme longshot that your problem would be due to a BIOS version.

First, get into your BIOS settings and see if the optical drive is present there.
That is the first step. Do not do any other steps until you have done the first step.

Losing all data from the HDD is even more concerning. You should explain that better.