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DVDRW drive disappears - can't fix via registry.
This is my first Windows 7 build, having upgraded from XP just 3 months ago. The DVD drive is the only component carried over from my previous PC. This new build is a dual-boot system, running XP on a separate drive.
In Windows 7, the drive is always present in Explorer, until I attempt to erase or write to a disc. The point at which it happens is random, but always shortly after the process begins. This has been happening ever since initial installation of Windows 7.
Different burning apps gave different results:
BurnAware Free resulted in a BSOD when finalizing a DVD-RW. Yes, I could have put this whole post in the BSOD section, but it only happens with this one app, which is the one I used all the time on XP.
CDBurnerXP made my system lag badly when attempting to erase or burn, and it remained laggy until I rebooted.
Ashampoo made the DVD drive disappear when trying to finalize a DVD-RW, sometimes earlier. It also made the hard drive that was was sharing the same SATA channel disappear too. I disconnected the DVD-RW and put it on a GSATA channel by itself. Now its just the DVD drive that disappears.
ImgBurn does manage to write a DVD-R and a DVD-RW, but sometimes results in the same problems as Ashampoo. But it doesn't write TS files to make a native movie DVD, unlike BurnAware or Ashampoo.
InfraRecorder never made any progress with erasing. "Started to erase disc in real write mode" with the drive light blinking as you'd expect but the gauge never filled one bit and neither did the buffer gauge. After 10 minutes it was obvious it was never going to get anywhere. The Cancel button was greyed out. Had to reboot.
DeepBurner completed a full erase at the disc's native speed of 2x. Successfully completed a burn.
However, tried a 2nd time after a reboot and the burn stalled at 7%, and the drive disappeared. Had to reboot to get the drive back again. A quick erase at the slowest speed always seems to work, never a full erase. A 3rd burn attempt at max speed worked. But repeating the quick erase and max speed burn failed on the 4th attempt at 5% into the burn. As usual it stalled and the drive disappered. After rebooting, and doing another quick erase, I tried another burn, this time filling half the disc at max speed, stalled at 67%.
I opened Regedit and navigated to the entry shown below suggested by Microsoft to fix a possible cause.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Control
\Class
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Control
\Class
\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
UpperFilters and Lowerfilters are both missing, so obviously I cannot use the suggested fix from Microsoft. When I click "Properties" on the left pane, I get a pop-up window saying "Properties cannot be opened. An error is preventing this key from being opened. Details: Access is denied."
I have tried unsinstalling the drive via Device Manager and rebooting but that changed nothing, so its unlikely to be a driver problem. And everything works okay in XP, so it can't be a hardware error.
Last edited by Jez2k; 27 Oct 2017 at 00:45. Reason: Specs already listed + grammatical errors.