DVD drive not recognized in Explorer

[Retired_bill]

months ago. Recently, when I open Explorer, it doesn't display the drive. In device manager it says the drive is working properly. I tried updating the driver and it said the driver is up-to-date. I also uninstalled the drive and rebooted the computer and it said it was properly installed. I put a disk in the drive and you can hear the drive spinning and the HD light is lit but it won't recognize the disk as nothing haI am running Win7, home premium, 64 bit on a Gateway computer that I purchased a couple of ppens on the screen. I have also gone thru the trouble shooting procedure in Windows. That worked originally but now it no longer works. I also created a manual restore when the DVD drive was recognized. I went back to that restore point but Explorer still won't recognize the drive. Any suggestions?

 

[Ubrales]

Try this - http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd_dvd_drive_problems/en-us
AND
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116 (Upper and Lower filters)

It is quite possible that the DVD drive is dead.

 

[Retired_bill]

I'm quite sure the drive is not dead. There are several ways I can recreate the icon in Explorer and get the drive to work. Not all of them work all the time. They are; perform a cold boot, run Spybot, run G-data, run malewarebytes, run Windows trouble shooter or run MSE. If I perform these apps one at a time, it usually gets it to run for a day or two. Its really frustrating. Any suggestions?

 

[tecmo34]

I would try this and see if it helps.

1) Go to your device manager and uninstall the DVD device.

2) Shut the PC down and unplug the device.

3) Boot the PC up into Windows, run for a minute or so and shut it back down.

4) Plug the DVD device back in and start the PC back up. This should cause Windows to reload the drivers again, which will hopefully correct the issue.

If you continue to have issues, I would recommend spending the $20 to buy a new one and see what happens (worse case you have a spare device for future use ).

 

[brandoncatz]

Double check your physical connection from the drive to the motherboard and then try the following:

Right-click My Computer
Click on Manage
On the left side click on Disk Management
On the right side, find your optical drive and make sure that the drive letter it wants to use is not being used by another drive or maybe your card reader.

If there is a conflict, right click on the optical drive and select change drive letter. Pick a letter, OK and if there is a disc in the drive the AutoPlay should immediately come up.

Hope this helps. If the device does not show in the tree at all, and it is receiving power, then a data issue that requires a drive replacement, or something like this is probably your resolution.

 

[WyomingKnott]

$20 can't buy a new DVD drive.

It can buy a decent SATA read-only DVD drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031&cm_re=dvd_drive_internal-_-27-118-031-_-Product
Gotta go $22 for a writer: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118031&cm_re=dvd_drive_internal-_-27-118-031-_-Product

Maybe it was a figure of speech for "inexpensive," an estimate, or based on a recent local purchase?

 

[Retired_bill]

No answer was the correct answer, but Brandoncatz came closest. I checked in drive management and there was no conflict with the drive letter. I decided to change it anyhow and set to drive W. Since then it has been working properly. Its been 4 days now and I have my fingers crossed. I can look at Explorer and there isn't any drive D; as the DVD drive was before. It doesn't make sense but it appears to be working.

 

[brandoncatz]

Hhhhhhhmmmmm... well, glad to hear that it's working! Are you sure that you don't have a card reader that has that drive letter assigned to it? Perhaps a hidden partition on one of your disks? In any case, it's working now, and that's good news!

 

[Retired_bill]

I wasn't aware that you could hide a partition. I have one HD and I have not partitioned it intentionally. However, if it came partitioned, how would I unhide it?

 

[brandoncatz]

I've never purposely hidden a partition (Microsoft and many PC manufacturers create one for system restore purposes), but I believe the only thing that makes them hidden is the lack of a drive letter, so I don't think that could be it. I'll keep thinking about it... not sure how that makes sense without there being a drive letter conflict.

 

[Retired_bill]

I went thru 4 days of the drive being recognized and then it failed. I have since been doing a large amount of testing and found that every time I use the email client (thunderbird) to download emails, I lose the icon for the DVD drive. I then ran my antivirus program (G-Data) and even though I didn't have a virus detected, the DVD drive icon was gone. I'm beginning to suspect that the problem lies with my antivirus because it scans the incoming messages. That's the status so far and I'll let you know when I find something definitive.

 

[Retired_bill]

Its getting worse. I used to be able to recover the drive if I turned off the computer and then turned off the power after it had turned itself off. Then it required that I let it sit overnight and now it won't recover at all. I asked Gateway what to do and they suggested using a link to Gateway to reload the OS. I've hesitated doing it as it requires that I have to reinstall all my programs. The data has already been stored offline. I guess I'll have to take that route.

 

[Ubrales]

Its getting worse. I used to be able to recover the drive if I turned off the computer and then turned off the power after it had turned itself off. Then it required that I let it sit overnight and now it won't recover at all. I asked Gateway what to do and they suggested using a link to Gateway to reload the OS. I've hesitated doing it as it requires that I have to reinstall all my programs. The data has already been stored offline. I guess I'll have to take that route.

Sometimes it's best to bite the bullet!

 

[Retired_bill]

I did just that that is I reinstalled the OS . It worked for a day while I installed my software and then it went out again. This time the DVD drive was not recognized by the device manager. I had the system returned to Gateway since I was sure from what you said and the performance that the problem was the drive. I should be getting the system back in a couple of weeks, thanks for your help.

 

[Retired_bill]

I think that Brandoncatz had the solution all along. Gateway said that my drive was bad and they replaced it. I still have my fingers crossed. Thank you all very much