My DVD drive is suddenly missing from Windows Vista

[i_hate_flying]

Hello.

I have a Toshiba Satellite U305 that I'm borrowing from my dad. I need to give it back to him in a week and get all my stuff off of it, but the CD/DVD burner has disappeared from within Windows Vista Home Edition.

I'm really not sure how long the drive has been missing as I just noticed it today. I've been travelling with some friends for the last 1.5 months and uploading all our pictures to the computer. When I went to burn some DVDs of these pictures, I noticed that my DVD burner was not listed in My Computer. After further investigation, I discovered that the drive was completely gone. It's missing from Device Manager and doesn't show up under Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management either. There is no evidence that it exists or ever was there, no exclamation marks next to the device in Device Manager or errors to indicate a device error or driver issue. When I try to discover the device with "Add new hardware", it isn't found.

I'm unsure if this is a problem with Vista, but when I put a CD or DVD in the drive, the drive spins up and the lights go on. I'm still away, not home for another week and I have no boot disc to try and boot from the drive. I'm not familiar with the Toshiba bios. I went into it, but I didn't see any mention of an optical drive, which leads me to think that there might be a hardware problem, but I might not be looking in the right place. I'm used to the evga 680i bios Maybe the drive controller has gone bad, or there's a loose connection. Maybe the drive is malfunctioning. I really have no idea.

Any suggestions are appreciated. I have spent countless hours surfing the internet from a coffee shop trying to find a solution. I want to point out that I have used to different registry fixes that supposedly work for many people. One removes the LowerFilters and UpperFilters values from the registry section. The other removes things like [HLM\SYS\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdr4_2K] etc. This hasn't worked. I'm ready to delete the IDE controllers from within Device Manager and reboot, but I'm really afraid to lose any information. I have almost 30 Gb of photographs from my camera, my brother's camera and my girlfriend's camera on here from our travels since the beginning of June. It would be disastrous to lose all that!

Thank you in advance for any help and/or suggestions.

 

[exit2dos]

Most of the time, this problem is resolved by shutting down into "Sleep" mode. The missing drives reappear when you wake the computer.

However, since you have a Toshiba, I suggest you try the hotfix:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934641

 

[i_hate_flying]

Yeah, I saw that some people are able to get their drives working again by going into sleep mode and coming back again. However, I always keep my computer in sleep mode and then I wake it up when I want to use it. This hasn't gotten my drive going in my case. I'll check out that hotfix article right now, though.

 

[pcarew]

I have the same issue, except with a SATA Hard Drive, on a HP DV9810us Laptop running Vista SP1.

On this laptop, if I put a Western Digital 120G hard drive in the second bay, it dissapears when resuming from sleep.

I discovered that if I put a Toshiba 120G drive in the second bay instead, this problem doesn't appear!!

With the WD drive, I tried setting the sleep time to "Never", but this didn't make any difference.

On further investigation (both drives are known to be good), it turns out that the WD drive use the default Microsoft SATA device handler, where as the Toshiba drive uses it's own device driver.

This definitely points to a MS device driver issue.

MS Driver details:
Driver Provider: Microsoft
Driver Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Driver Date: 6/21/2006

I tried running "Driver Update", but Microsoft reported that this was the most up to date driver at this time (January 14th 2009)

Western Digital doesn't provide any updated drivers (or any drivers for that matter) from their web site.

 

[4Ryan6]

Yeah, I saw that some people are able to get their drives working again by going into sleep mode and coming back again. However, I always keep my computer in sleep mode and then I wake it up when I want to use it. This hasn't gotten my drive going in my case. I'll check out that hotfix article right now, though.

Go in Device Manager and uninstall the drive and restart the machine.

When the machine restarts Vista will find and reinstall it.

If its not listed in device manager, you have more of a problem than Vista.

Check your BIOS settings for the recognition of the drive and Cabling connections to the drive itself for any loose connections.

 

[pcarew]

"Go in Device Manager and uninstall the drive and restart the machine"

I tried this, it didn't make any difference as Vista re-installed the latest driver it had, which is the default MS SATA driver from 2006

 

[westcoastred]

I have come across the same issue recently on an acer 4190. Device manager shows the dvd drive as being present and working correctly.

None of the common fixes seem to work for me: Deleting the Upper/Lower Limits in the registry, updating the driver - vista insists the latest driver is installed, disabling and rebooting - vista recognises drive and installs but i still can't get it to display in my computer.

When I use computer management and try to assign a letter for the dvd drive it will allow me to go so far as to choose the drive letter i wish to use, though before i can click ok it resets back to blank!!! ???

 

[marstein]

ANother possible solution is to delete the lowerFilter and upperFIlter entries for the device in the registry. Google it and you will find lots of articles.
This didn't help me...

 

[i_hate_flying]

Just to update this thread, a year after the original post, nothing would get the drive working again. I found a certified Toshiba repair center near where my dad lives and brought the drive there. There were a few other people there with their Toshiba's and they told me that this was the second time, third time, fourth time etc. that they've been there with the same problem, various problems etc. Guess I won't ever buy a Toshiba! The guys there didn't really want to help and said they'd have to hold on to the Laptop for a few weeks. We ended up saying "screw it" and I bought an external hard drive and transferred all the photos and videos to that. According to my dad, the drive still doesn't work, even after multiple fresh installs of Vista. He waited for the one-year Toshiba warranty to run out so that he could take it to Circuit City and have them fix it on the additional one-year warranty he purchased. But so much for that. I told him not to buy from a chain and I told him not to buy Toshiba's...

 

[Guest]

1. Click the Start Button/Windows Icon (start menu).

2. Either type "regedit" or click Run and type regedit.

NOTE: User Account Control may ask for permission to continue. Select Continue

This will then load the Registry Editor.

3. In Registry Editor, navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

NOTE: You will know you are in the right place because the Status Bar at the bottom of Registry Editor will show the above in the status bar.

Remember, you're looking for 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318

There are other entries with only 1, 2 digit differences - so don't get confused!

3. In the right hand pane, find and click UpperFilters.

4. Right click and select Delete. If you're not confident using the right click, then select the Edit menu, then click Delete.

5. In the right hand pane, find and click LowerFilters.

6. Right click and select Delete. If you're not confident using the right click, then select the Edit menu, then click Delete.

7. Exit Registry Editor.

Now restart your computer. You should have your DVD/CD Rom again.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey