The Vista "Ooops, where's your DVD" problem

[miura74]

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...

• 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!)

According to Microsofts, rather unhelpful tech pages, they claim it could be either faulty hardware or that I've installed a DVD burning software that is not approved by them. DRM may cause this problem as I've read many people have trouble reading DVD films, proper non-pirate ones. Additionally itunes is also blamed by Microsoft, although I don't have that at all.

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.

 

[Morty Mort]

Right-click "My Computer" in the Start menu.

Hit "Manage".

Select "Disk Management".

Is it listed here? In the lower area. The upper area will only display harddrives. It should say "CD-ROM 0 No Media" or similiar. Sometimes drives are lost when you insert a USB pin and the CD-ROM drive letter got mixed up with the assigned USB disk drive letter.

Just to rule that one out...

 

[Morty Mort]

When USB disk drives get lost or mixes up with other drives, the solution is to enter the Disk Management and assign new (other) drive letters to the problem disks.

 

[miura74]

Right-click "My Computer" in the Start menu.

Hit "Manage".

Select "Disk Management".

Is it listed here? In the lower area. The upper area will only display harddrives. It should say "CD-ROM 0 No Media" or similiar. Sometimes drives are lost when you insert a USB pin and the CD-ROM drive letter got mixed up with the assigned USB disk drive letter.

Just to rule that one out...

Sadly, no, if I go there, there is no DVD/CD drive listed at all. Same as under Device Manager actually. Which is a little odd that Microsoft take the section away if there are no drives listed below.

It should be E: drive obviously, Acer supply this laptop by default with 2 partitions, C & D. Usually the USB sticks take F: onwards, but I should stress I do have an external 1TB HDD with 3 partitions, drives K, L and M.

I hadn't considered the drive letter may be messed up?

 

[miura74]

When USB disk drives get lost or mixes up with other drives, the solution is to enter the Disk Management and assign new (other) drive letters to the problem disks.

None of the drives currently seem to conflict, but how can I rule out the USB sticks?

I use a few different ones, is there a way to see them in the system, without plugging them in?

Or should I try simply plugging them all in (if I can locate them all!) ?

 

[willeywilson]

I Had this problem on my dad's machine, google "upper lower filter dvd drive" or something along those lines, basically you end up having to go into the registry into a specific place and delet the upper or lower value/limits/ filters it then *magically* reappears as a dvd rom drive :/. Bloody vista, now windows 7 keeps loosing my tv tuner :!

 

[willeywilson]

found this on another site, it's pretty much what I did to my dads machine and when I restarted his computer the drive was there. anywhoo, hope this helps.

rubrami281211Posts September 30, 2008Registration date Oct 27, 2008 5:03pm GMT
First......restart computer....go to start...control panel....system.....device manager....under dvd/cd drives open + and look 4 yellow caution triangle icon...right click and delete...close window....go to start....run....type in "regedit" ok..go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE...open + on SYSTEM open + on CURRENTCONTROLSET open + on CONTROL open + on CLASS open + LOOK FOR {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE,etc.} and click on it........to screen on right look for "lower filters" hi-lite....go to top left and on edit right click and delete! Do same 4 "Upper filters"..........close window and restart computer.............without touching any buttons on keyboard....except to login......you should see driver being installed once again for your dvd/cd drive.........GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tinkerbert]

You highlighted the problem in your post title. "Vista" Upgrade to 7 or even downgrade to a stripped out version of XP such as Black or Gold.
Just my tuppence worth. As a former Vista user and IT guy I think it's the worst OS that Microsoft have produced. But then I'm not keen on any Windoze OS, I much prefer OSX and would recommend to anyone, if you can afford it, get yourself a Mac. You can pick up a decent 2/3 year old iMac for the same price as a new pc/laptop.

 

[miura74]

found this on another site, it's pretty much what I did to my dads machine and when I restarted his computer the drive was there. anywhoo, hope this helps.

rubrami281211Posts September 30, 2008Registration date Oct 27, 2008 5:03pm GMT
First......restart computer....go to start...control panel....system.....device manager....under dvd/cd drives open + and look 4 yellow caution triangle icon...right click and delete...close window....go to start....run....type in "regedit" ok..go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE...open + on SYSTEM open + on CURRENTCONTROLSET open + on CONTROL open + on CLASS open + LOOK FOR {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE,etc.} and click on it........to screen on right look for "lower filters" hi-lite....go to top left and on edit right click and delete! Do same 4 "Upper filters"..........close window and restart computer.............without touching any buttons on keyboard....except to login......you should see driver being installed once again for your dvd/cd drive.........GOOD LUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had already tried this method, which did not work for me. My problem is the whole drive, nay, the whole DVD/CD section has vanished from the device manager.

But thanks for taking a look.

 

[miura74]

You highlighted the problem in your post title. "Vista" Upgrade to 7 or even downgrade to a stripped out version of XP such as Black or Gold.
Just my tuppence worth. As a former Vista user and IT guy I think it's the worst OS that Microsoft have produced. But then I'm not keen on any Windoze OS, I much prefer OSX and would recommend to anyone, if you can afford it, get yourself a Mac. You can pick up a decent 2/3 year old iMac for the same price as a new pc/laptop.

Yes, some of the boards I've read mention people going back to XP.

Why do we all put up with this kinda stuff?

I've just purchased a full size USB external burner and I'll see how that goes. Little bit worried though, as I've read many people who did this only to find the USB drive doesn't work either with Vista.

 

[ChrisUK]

Think thats a sign to ditch vista . After all Microsoft did....

 

[Captain Mike]

Think thats a sign to ditch vista . After all Microsoft did....

This was also going to be my reply!

 

[ben]

I had this problem intermitantly for ages - I'd be watching a DVD then suddenly it would turn off as the drive had disappeared!

Originally it was caused by Nero, but removing it didn't help.

Upgrade to Windows 7 solved it though

 

[TallTom]

Yes, some of the boards I've read mention people going back to XP.

Why do we all put up with this kinda stuff?

I've just purchased a full size USB external burner and I'll see how that goes. Little bit worried though, as I've read many people who did this only to find the USB drive doesn't work either with Vista.

If you can remove all the files you need to keep then do a fresh reinstall see if that makes a difference. You can get an external HDD or USB pen to store your files on, or even transfer to another computer with enough space over wired/wireless with a shared folder on the same network.

I think with an Acer it should have a partioned HDD with Vista and Recovery or similar and if I recall correctly you can press something like Alt+F10 on startup and copy a complete image to the main partition so its a fresh install.

Then just a case of updating everything again and restoring all of the files and software.

Bit of a long way to do it, but I work in IT as an IT consultant and did 1 yr helpdesk before that, as well as running a side business at home of fixing peoples laptops and Desktops and this is often the quickest way to do something.

I agree that vista is rubbish, and XP and 7 are pretty good, however XP is no longer supported anymore so you will want to go to 7

 

[306maxi]

You highlighted the problem in your post title. "Vista" Upgrade to 7 or even downgrade to a stripped out version of XP such as Black or Gold.
Just my tuppence worth. As a former Vista user and IT guy I think it's the worst OS that Microsoft have produced. But then I'm not keen on any Windoze OS, I much prefer OSX and would recommend to anyone, if you can afford it, get yourself a Mac. You can pick up a decent 2/3 year old iMac for the same price as a new pc/laptop.

I'll agree that Vista wasn't the best but it's not the worst by a longshot! ME anyone? pre SE 98?

I only ever used a couple of ME pc's and they were dire and as soon as you tried to do anything they just crashed...... 98 was pretty bad before SE..... you would just be on PC's and they'd crash if you were on continuously for more than a couple of hours.

XP needed to be replaced, Windows 7 is what we really wanted but Vista wasn't as bad as ME!

Why use a 2 or 3 year old Macbook when you can get a far higher spec machine brand new with 7 on it? I love Windows 7, reinstalled it on my PC on the weekend and 15 minutes after starting the install it was booting to the desktop and my PC is 2 and a half years old so hardly the fastest. Not long after that it was fully patched and I was downloading all of my games on Steam.......