Windows Not Seeing DVD Drive Anymore

[ZaLiTH]

[SOLVED] Windows Not Seeing DVD Drive Anymore

Before I ask this, keep in mind this is not a hardware issue; I can boot from DVDs and CDs without any problem, so the drive is connected correctly and is still working fine.

The last couple weeks I have had random power failures in the area I live in, so I suspect certain files on my PC may possibly be corrupted... But at the same time, I'm not sure if that's the cause of this problem.

About a week back, my DVD drive suddenly stopped working for no apparent reason. I put a disk in the drive, heard it spin up, and waited for the autorun prompt. When it didn't show up, I opened 'Computer' to manually access the disk, and at this point noticed my DVD drive wasn't in the list. Checking in Device Manager it shows my DVD drive (I can't remember the exact model now, but it's a Samsung drive, shows up as TSSCorp------) in the list under DVD/CD-ROM Drives, but it has a yellow exclamation mark symbol on it stating the device is not working properly.

I first tried removing the drivers ('Uninstall' in Device Manager) and restarted my PC; upon startup still no drive and Device Manager still showed an error. My next step was to try check with SFC in an elevated command prompt (using SFC /SCANNOW), due to having certain customizations in Windows (theme, Start Orb, NotePad++, etc) it did find a few files to replace, but still no luck with the DVD drive.

I'm reluctant to format and reinstall just to get a DVD drive working again, especially considering I have no internet connection at home and all my Windows Live based local game profiles will be lost (I've tried transferring them from one profile to the next; doesn't work).

I booted off the Windows 7 DVD to see if there was a 'Repair Install' option, but I couldn't find anything that looked too helpful. The closest I could find was a startup repair, which didn't fix or change anything because my computer still starts up without any issues...

So is there anything else I can try and do to get my drive working again..? I'm running short of ideas here.

 

[theog]

Try this:

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media
The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that you upgraded to Windows Vista

 

[karlsnooks]

Be sure and check reg locations referenced herein:

Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media

 

[ZaLiTH]

Try this:

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media
The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that you upgraded to Windows Vista

I have to be honest; I never really had much faith in the built-in troubleshooters from my Windows XP days, so I didn't think to try those now. The third link doesn't seem to be applicable however; but I will read through it more thoroughly just in case (I never have had Vista on my PC, let alone upgraded to or from it).

Be sure and check reg locations referenced herein:

Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media

Unfortunately, the MATS Fixit tools don't have an offline installer, it has to download data in order to run.. As I mentioned in the top post, I have no internet at home... But thanks for pointing it out anyway.


Anyway, I'll try these ideas tonight and see if it helps. Thanks.

 

[Petey7]

It looks to me like the third link from Theog could apply to your situation. Keep in mind 7 and Vista are designed in a very similar manner so many problems apply to both and those problems usually have the same solution.

 

[ZaLiTH]

It looks to me like the third link from Theog could apply to your situation. Keep in mind 7 and Vista are designed in a very similar manner so many problems apply to both and those problems usually have the same solution.

I'll look into it, but I didn't install or uninstall any apps before this started happening. It wouldn't even be automatic updates or driver updates..

However, the third link has the same instructions as the first link for the "fix it yourself" section. Which is what I'm going to try tonight.

 

[ZaLiTH]

Try this:

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media
The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that you upgraded to Windows Vista

Thanks for the links theog, the first link containted the solution for me problem.. Which (strangely enough) also happens to be the same solution as that listed in the third one.

For the record, the troubleshooters I ran (mentioned in the first link under "Let me fix it myself") didn't solve anything, but removing the 'LowerFilters' entry and restarting (suggested for Vista) worked perfectly.

Thanks again for the help.