Windows 7 Wont Detect External DVD Drive

Hey guys...newbie posting out of total desperation and needing help!

I bought a Samsung SH-D162D DVD Drive in a USB enclosure to connect to my Toshiba Windows 7 laptop via USB.

I cannot get windows 7 to find it! When I plug in the USB cable the balloon comes up to say it has been installed, I can see it on My Computer for about 1 or 2 minutes then it drops off. It isnt listed in my hardware or anything.

Its not found in Disk Management or My Devices so it isnt a case of changing the drive letter - i cant find the drive to change it.

I have also tried to find the upper and lower settings in regedit....couldnt find them so couldnt delete them as advised in other posts of this nature.

It is set to master, the IDE connector and power connectors are fine. Its gotta be a windows 7 problem cause it does show up very breifly. In the minute or 2 its there I cant do anything with it...it just hangs although it will open and close. Ive googled it and cant find anything...mainly registry issues but they didnt help.

Ive also connected it up to another laptop with XP and had no problems so I know the DVD Rom works fine and all the cables are ok.

Ive tried in all 4 USB ports on my laptop and also turned off all energy settings...all with no luck. And I also have EVERY windows 7 update...

Heres exactly what happens from power off on the enclosure.

1 - I plug in the USB lead then turn on power to the enclosure.
2 - I quickly go to Start, Computer and I can see the DVD Rom drive E next to my laptops dvd rom.
3 - The green bar at the top starts filling up from left to right and gets about half way then suddenly the DVD Rom icon disappears and so does the green bar.
4 - It then flashes up under the laptops DVD Rom icon with a Local Disk drive E but only for a split second.
5 - Sometimes a balloon comes up saying installing device, then device successfully installed...but not every time.

And thats it....Im at a total loss and cant work it out.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

i also have the same problem some post it is mentioned you have to switch off your system and ten plug the external drive.I still have to test this.Have you fixed your system.

Check your BIOS, there may be a setting that needs to be turned on for external devices to be found.

Note: check your connections in your BIOS as well, I think those should be set to SATA or USB for external drives. IDE is old school, 40 pin ribbon.

Hi there
This is unfortunately a fairly common issue but usually fixed more easily than you think --same problem occurs with external USB HDD's.

There's something called a DISK-ID or something which is used - these must be unique and if you switch USB drives etc a lot between different machines then the numbers get "hosed up".

However you can ignore all that "Geeky" stuff

do the following

Go into control panel ==> administrative tools==>computer management==>storage==>disk management

You will see a screen similar to what I've shown

Scroll down and you'll probably see a Drive with no letter assigned.

Right click Click on it and ADD drive letter

chose one from the drop down e.g H:

You'll then find Windows will mount the drive as drive H: and it will be acessible normally with Windows explorer etc.

Works for external USB DVD drives and USB HDD's.

I often get this problem with a USB DVD external drive which I use on 3 different laptops - probably because the Drive letter assigned is different on each machine !!.


Engineering isn't the fashion these days -- but an old adage is " Given any set of circumstances that possibly could solve a problem -- the SIMPLEST one is likely to be the correct one"... and I've found 99.99% of the time this approach works.


Cheers
jimbo

Thank you so very much, Jimbo! I've been struggling with this issue since I upgraded to Ultimate. Although I must do a reinstall, at least I can now back up my own work, which I feared I would have to sacrifice on the altar of the mighty Microsoft. I cannot express my gratitude to you enough. Thank you once again! I'm carving you instructions in stone !!! Cheers!

buy a Y USB cable with 2 USB ports and one mini USB. the DVD writers need more power and one USB port for data exchange and the other for power. DVD player/writer works promptly.