Solved CD/DVD drive not showing up

[markeh1]

I thought this might be of interest, even though the last post I could find on this topic here was long ago.
Using Windows 7, my CD drive didn't show up when I showed my computer.
Device did show up in bios/boot menu, in fact I could boot a recovery dvd off of it.
Device did show up in device manager as working.

I uninstalled the device, and let windows find and re-install it. Said working fine.. still no luck

I went through all of the steps I could find, mostly on the Microsoft web site:
<https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/314060/your-cd-or-dvd-drive-is-not-recognized-by-windows-or-other-programs>

This included hand modifying registry entries.

Nothing fixed it.

Finally.....

I went to Administrative tools ---> Computer Management-->Disk Management.
I might have then gone to View --> show hidden devices (don't remember)

At the bottom of the disk devices, I found my DVD drive. It had no letter assigned. I assigned my favorite DVD letter J: (I'm sure the exact letter doesn't matter as long as it's not in use)

Right click on the DVD entry and assign a drive letter - now shows up in My Computer listing. Works fine.

Hope that saves someone a bunch of time. Probably the first thing to check, as it's the easiest to fix.
.

 

[lmr]

Thanks so much for the Tip. I had the same problem, which began after I did a restore of my Win 7 Home Premium. It worked right after I did the restore, but after I added all the Windows updates, it stopped recognizing the DVD. I restored again to try and get the drive recognized, but same thing happened again. I went on and tried just about everything else as you did, but your tip seems to have made the difference. When I went in, a drive letter was assigned but I changed it anyway and it seems to be working (at least for now). Thanks again.