I'm just wondering if some the other IT people may have a solution to this.
Basically, my 1 year old Acer has lost it's panasonic DVD drive. Completely. No CD/DVD roms listed in the Device Manager, although the BIOS lists it. The drive also runs and boots fine, attempts to read discs and spins upto speed. Vista however, has completely lost it. Therefore, I cannot use it at all in Vista.
I just happened to notice one day that the driver was not listed. I do not know for how long.
A quick few googles and many hours of reading tech boards, I discovered a problem that lies in Vista. Seems, Vista can "forget" your drive completely.
Although I have tried various methods to bring it back, none have worked.
I've tried...
Elements would point to faulty hardware, perhaps, but it actually works! Power, eject, spins. Just Vista doesn't want to know it exists.
As it is a laptop, frankly, I don't want to pull it apart to see if the drive is not connected properly, or the connection damaged. Also being fairly integral, I'd have to get a very similar drive rather than just a normal one.
Oddly, yesterday the drive came back and worked 100%, until I started my PC again today. The only thing I did yesterday was, I plugged in a new USB memory stick, this in turn ran the driver installer, which suddenly made the drive reappear. Today, it's gone again.
I've read many even purchase USB drives, only to find they get lost with Vista too. Even though there is nothing wrong with the drives!
Any ideas?
Or shall I just put this down on my long list of Microsoft pet hates.
Basically, my 1 year old Acer has lost it's panasonic DVD drive. Completely. No CD/DVD roms listed in the Device Manager, although the BIOS lists it. The drive also runs and boots fine, attempts to read discs and spins upto speed. Vista however, has completely lost it. Therefore, I cannot use it at all in Vista.
I just happened to notice one day that the driver was not listed. I do not know for how long.
A quick few googles and many hours of reading tech boards, I discovered a problem that lies in Vista. Seems, Vista can "forget" your drive completely.
Although I have tried various methods to bring it back, none have worked.
I've tried...
- Removing "upper" and "lower" filters in the registry
- Running a registery cleaning software
- Trying the "sleep" and "awake" method
- Restoring Vista back to a restore point (this actually fails!)
Elements would point to faulty hardware, perhaps, but it actually works! Power, eject, spins. Just Vista doesn't want to know it exists.
As it is a laptop, frankly, I don't want to pull it apart to see if the drive is not connected properly, or the connection damaged. Also being fairly integral, I'd have to get a very similar drive rather than just a normal one.
Oddly, yesterday the drive came back and worked 100%, until I started my PC again today. The only thing I did yesterday was, I plugged in a new USB memory stick, this in turn ran the driver installer, which suddenly made the drive reappear. Today, it's gone again.
I've read many even purchase USB drives, only to find they get lost with Vista too. Even though there is nothing wrong with the drives!
Any ideas?
Or shall I just put this down on my long list of Microsoft pet hates.