Missing DVD RW Drive

[JimBob]

Hello,
Just installed Win 7 and have the problem of my DVD RW Drive(E) not showing
up when I select Computer. I also have a DVD Drive(F) which shows up.
Checked with Microsoft but they couldn't help solving the problem. The drive
shows OK in the bios, but not in Win 7 device manager. Finally figured out
if I select Control Panel, system security find and fix problems, hardware
and sound configure device then select next my DVD RW Drive(E) now shows and
also shows in device manager , but when I restart the E drive goes missing
again. I went thru the procedure to get it showing again and then tried
uninstalling via the device manager and restarting to let it reinstall.
During the restarting a popup showed the message installing driver for the
DVD RW Drive, but the drive still didn't show. Has anybody had this same
problem and if so would appreciate any info.
Thanks

 

[Don Morgan]

Try--Microsoft Fix it 50027. It worked for me.
Don M.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, JimBob.

What does Disk Management say about that DVD drive?

Just click Start, type "diskmgmt.msc" and press Enter. Furnish
Administrator credentials - and you may have to wait a while if you have as
many drives and partitions as I do. :^}

You may need to assign a drive letter to that device, rather than make
Windows shuffle letters each time you add or remove something.

Computer and Device Manager can handle some jobs, but if you want to
actually take control and manage your drives, use Disk Management.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[JimBob]

Thanks for your response. This is also for R.C. White,
I checked out the fix it 50027. This particular fix is not listed for
Windows 7. I looked under Vista and found it, but I noticed the advise this
fix was not intended for Windows 7. So instead of just trying to apply the
fix I decided to check out the manual fix. The registry settings for this
fix do not show in the Windows 7 registry so could not try it. The fix it
web site explained that Windows 7 has built in troubleshooting for problems
and referred me to the steps I have already tried explained in my post.
Although the steps worked it would not stay fixed when the computer was
restarted.

for R.C White,
Disk Management shows the drive with the correct drive letter after I ran
the troubleshooting explained in my post. After restarting the computer the
drive no long shows in Disk Management. I tried "rescan disks" and the
drive showed up, but after restarting computer was once again gone.
I don't know of anything else I can do in Disk Management.

 

[kolnikoff]

Hello,
Just installed Win 7 and have the problem of my DVD RW Drive(E) not
showing up when I select Computer. I also have a DVD Drive(F) which
shows up. Checked with Microsoft but they couldn't help solving the
problem. The drive shows OK in the bios, but not in Win 7 device
manager. Finally figured out if I select Control Panel, system security
find and fix problems, hardware and sound configure device then select
next my DVD RW Drive(E) now shows and also shows in device manager , but
when I restart the E drive goes missing again. I went thru the procedure
to get it showing again and then tried uninstalling via the device
manager and restarting to let it reinstall. During the restarting a
popup showed the message installing driver for the DVD RW Drive, but the
drive still didn't show. Has anybody had this same problem and if so
would appreciate any info.
Thanks

Hi JimBob,

Is the drive a SATA one? I had issues with my SATA drive (it would show
up in Device Manager/Disk Management but would not read nor write
discs). I too contacted Microsoft but no use - they ended up straw
grasping just like me. Only way to solve it was to put in an IDE drive,
which works perfectly.

Cheers

Kol
'''

 

[JimBob]

Thanks for the reply. Both of my DVD drive are IDE. It's odd one will show
up but not the other. Both worked fine in XP. I will have to just keep
looking.

 

[kolnikoff]

Thanks for the reply. Both of my DVD drive are IDE. It's odd one will
show up but not the other. Both worked fine in XP. I will have to just
keep looking.

Hi JimBob,

My own feelings are that Microsoft rewrote cdrom.sys for Win 7 and
haven't covered all bases. Maybe we'll have to wait until manufacturers
realise this and rewrite their firmware accordingly (both MS and
manufacturers will say their stuff is compliant, but....)

cheers

Kol
'''

 

[JimBob]

Hi Kolnikoff,

That's not the only problem I have encountered in the 2 days Windows 7 has
been installed. As I understand it the account that is set up during
installation is an administrative account. After I finished the install I
could not access my Saved(D) drive. I was told I didn't have permission. I
finally figured out I had to go into the security of the drive and manually
add my account. Once that was done I could access the drive. I guess there
will be other bugs as we go along. I guess Microsoft just pushed the new OS
out to early. I have a limited knowledge of computers, but I do like the
challenge of trying to figure things out.
Thanks

 

[*BUSY*]

Could be an IRQ conflict where one device does not have enough resources to
function. More likely though would be a jumper setting, loose cable or wrong
BIOS setting for cable select/type. If your tied into one PATA port with two
devices one must be a slave (jumper settings). Your motherboard manual may
designate a specific PATA port for CD/DVD drives.



__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus signature database 4602 (20091113) __________

The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.

http://www.eset.com

 

[JimBob]

Hello all,
I really do appreciate all the attempts to help me. I believe my DVD drives
are figured correctly as they both work fine in XP. It just so happens I had
decided to replace my old pata hard drives with sata hard drives when I
installed Windows 7. Seeing how Windows 7 internal troubleshooting would
correct the problem, but having the problem come back after a restart I got
to thinking I now had two IDE controllers free. I decided to put one DVD
drive on one controller and the other on the second controller to see what
would happen. Well that worked fine. I now have both DVD drives showing all
the time with not problems. I guess that old saying "there is more than one
way to skin a cat" worked in this situation. Again thanks to all.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, JimBob.

Congratulations! And thanks for the feedback.

Many of us are rapidly forgetting the lessons that we learned about IDE, but
it's coming back to me now. Each controller typically could handle two
devices on a single cable, but the devices had to be set to Master and
Slave, usually by moving tiny little "jumpers" to connect different pairs of
pins. Or, as you figured out, we could connect just one device on each
channel, probably setting them both to Master. Newer systems use Cable
Select, often with 80-wire cables on 40-pin connectors. Just as we got
comfy with the new setup, SATA came along, with its
one-drive-per-skinny-data-cable arrangement and we started forgetting how to
set up those wide cables.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

 

[JimBob]

Hi R.C. White,
My DVD drives where setup master and slave with the jumpers, the same way I
had them setup in XP, when I was trying to install them on the same
controller in Win 7. It just would not work. What I couldn't understand was
the Win 7 internal troubleshooter would correct the problem until the next
restart then the master DVD drive was gone again. Anyway I'm just happy
their both working OK now. Appreciate your interest.