MISSING cd Drive

[thegeezerrr]

hi guys, i have 2 small problems i wonder if u could help me with. firstly the laptop i have is a sony vaio vgn-fj3m .when i got it it had XP on it, i then stuck vista on , no problem, then i put win 7 on and i have a few glitches. 1) the cd drive is not showing up at all, not in the device manager. i have checked that its activated in the bios start up. ive done the upper , lower filters jobbie with the registry and ive tried drivers but nothing. i also tried another cd drive with no results and finally i tried extracting a driver from the vista disc which worked for the wireless set up. thats the first one. . the laptop is about 7 years old and still has life in it but these probs are a pain.
many thanks for your help in advance...TG

 

[Britton30]

Hi, how did you install w7, Upgrade path or fresh install? Have you run Windows Update?

 

[thegeezerrr]

hi there thanks for reply/ i formatted HD for a clean install but i had to use a CD drive connected via usb from another p.c..... all updates have been installed. daft thing is it worked with xp and vista. during aanother post i made about windows seven problems, i was told that this laptop could be struggling with w7 and could nt upgrade anymore even though i added more RAM. i use mozzilla and it keeps saying ( not responding ) and if i touch a key it freezes for a few seconds, i dont think its a browser problem because i tried Chrome and it does exacly the same. could w7 be pushing this unit to much.. many thanks

 

[Britton30]

It is a little dated but if it ran Vista OK it should run w7 as well. That still doesn't explain why it won't recognize the CD drive though.

If you feel you can do it, you could power off, remove the drive and boot up. Then power off reinstall it and boot up to see if that would force a recognition.

 

[thegeezerrr]

Many thanks. I'm off to bed now, hard day, so I.will.do.tomorrow. many thanks

 

[thegeezerrr]

many thanks BRITTON30 for your reply. well i did what you said about removing the drive and then install it after na power down but same again, it doesnt recognise it . at this point it must be crying out that the drive is faulty. i did try it with a sony cd drive as it came with a panasonic one, thinking it would work with the sony as the laptops a sony.. it worked with the xp and vista versions, like a said i was going to see if i could load the vista driver but i have to locate the drive first .

 

[Britton30]

Rats, I hoped that would work. I'm going to ask for some help on this, there's no logical reason the drive would fail and it probably hasn't since the Sony drive won't work either. The brand shouldn't make a difference so long as the drive(s) have the proper connection.

 

[Gandalf]

1. Please post a image of your Device Manager.

2. Also, try this...
Download Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor from Official Microsoft Download Center
It can't hurt and it might tell you something.

Thanks

 

[Boozad]

Just to double check, are you only running 7 on there or do you still have Vista installed as well? I only ask as your system specs say both, and ironically enough I rolled the father-on-law's Acer Aspire 5535 laptop back to Vista from 7 today (he gave us the laptop, I installed my copy of 7 and now he wants it back) and didn't format the HDD before installing Vista. The result was a 7/Vista *******isation dual boot install and it was as slow as hell.
I couldn't get things to work properly, and while this may have been down to impatience I think that was only 50% of it.

When I installed Vista again and formatted the HDD prior to the install things were a hell of a lot smoother.

 

[Britton30]

He owns a desktop and a laptop.

 

[Boozad]

He owns a desktop and a laptop.

Aaah OK, I just saw the 7 and Vista and immediately thought of what happened to me earlier. My bad.

 

[Slartybart]

Please post the output from a Cmd Prompt window

reg query "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}" /s​

You could also try this MS Fixit:

Fix problems with CD or DVD drives that can?t read or write media​

 

[Slartybart]

.....
like a said i was going to see if i could load the vista driver but i have to locate the drive first .

I'm guessing that you meant driver, not drive

Put the original Optical drive back in the machine and try updating the firmware:
Sony : VGN-FJ3M : SuperMulti Drive Firmware UJ-850BSX1-J

Although it's listed as a Vista version, it shouldn't matter (Vista and Win7 are fairly close and this is firmware for the hardware, not the OS).

Just a heads up - I had a HPcpq laptop with Vista that exhibited the same issue - CD went missing. I reinstalled Vista and it would show up intermittently. Eventually the whole machine died - I opened the box and found a few burned out components. Not worth my time to solder new capacitors or replace the mobo. A new machine solved all the issues with no effort at all.

Bill
.