hello all,

i noticed today the cd drive on my pc is gone without a trace

i've searched the web and found several solutions, but none worked
things i've tried are:
- running regedit and deleting upperfilter and lowerfilter (actually, they were not present, so nothing to delete
- downloaded DMR's xp_cd_dvd_fix, ran it and rebooted 3-4 times, but to no avail

i'll copy here a question list from DMR from a thread about a similar problem

A) Has the drive ever worked properly?

yes, even yesterday

B) If the drive has worked before, can you think of anything that changed in the system (hardware changes, program installations/upgrades/removals, a serious crash, an error message window appearing, etc.) around the time you first noticed the problem?

downloaded a windows update yesterday, and tried reinstalling WoW, but it failed due to corrupted files. ran scandisk which fixed some clusters. ran scandisk again today and it found nothing.

C) Right-click on your My Computer icon and choose "Manage" from the resulting menu.
* In the Computer Management windows, click on Storage->Disk Management.
* Look in the right-hand pane of the Disk Management window.
Is any identifying info about your CD/DVD drive listed there?

no, only my 2 HDs C and D are present

D) Right click on your My Computer icon.
* Choose "Properties" from the resulting drop-down menu.
* Click on the "Hardware" tab.
* Click on the "Device Manager" button.

In the list of your installed hardware, are there any devices which have a yellow exclamation point or a red "X" next to their name/icon? If so, double-clicking on the problematic device will open a status window which will give you more details concerning the error. Post those details (fully and completely), as well as the exact name of the device in question.

nope, nothing

E) Does the computer's BIOS recognize that the drive is physically installed? The BIOS' setup utility is accessed by pressing a certain key when the system first boots (before Windows starts); the most common access keys are F1, F2, Del, and Esc. Look in the BIOS setup pages for a listing of your installed drives and see if any information which identifies the combo drive is present there.

didn't see anything. then again i didn't really know what i was looking for.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Presumably you can get to the BIOS on boot and give the CD device Boot priority.

Then if to boot from your Windows CD or OEM restore CD/DVD then it'll prove that the device is at least seen by the BIOS and works.

With regard to step (E) in your post, you are looking for any reference to the CD/DVD device. Report what it says.

If the BIOS doesn't see the drive, then either the controller is faulty, or the casble is faulty, or the drive is faulty. Sort of thing.

the drive miraculously returned
i'm glad, but i don't trust it

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