The mysterious case of the disapearing DVD Drive

I have been having an intermittant problem over the last six months or so. I have a Travelmate 5510 running Windows xp (service pack 3). I keep losing the DVD drive. The drive is not appearing in the start up scripts. It has been back to Acer who say it is not a hardware problem, it is probably a software conflict.

The only way I can get the drive back is to do the Alt F10 at start up and reset to the factory defaults. This wipes all my data from the C: drive and, quite frankly, this is starting to irritate me big time.

Looking at the error log on the advanced system information section of MS Help and Support Centre shows this mesage.

The device 'MAT****A DVD-RAM UJ-850S' (IDE\CdRomMAT****A_DVD-RAM_UJ- 850S________________1.20____\5 &2b182631&0&0.0.0) disappeared from the system without first being prepared for removal.

Any ideas as to what is causing this and any one know of a fix?

 

If you can see it after you do a restore, at which point exactly does it disappear? Does it disappear from the device manager too?

 

There is no set limit to when it disapears, sometimes it is there for a couple of weeks, sometimes it goes within the hour.

It doesn't appear in the device manager once it disappears from the start up script.

Thanks for your interest.

 

Is it after you install some software? After a windows update has run? Have you tried to do a search for new hardware to see if the drive can be found again? Are your IDE controllers disappearing too? Have you tried uninstalling the drivers and then reinstalling them? That's pretty much all I can think of.

 

I can't really give you a definative answer to the first question, but there seems to be no pattern to it. Done the driver thing to death!!

 

this is copied from another forum from a while back when i had similar problems with my aspire 5100. i don't know if it will work for you but i'd say its worth a shot

If the drive is not showing up in My Computer, then you can fix it through the registry (see below).
If it is just having trouble reading a CD, then it can be that you need to clean the laser using a cleaning CD that you can buy at most any store with computer stuff (ie, Walmart).
It is possible that your drive is malfunctioning (ie, bad) and you need to replace it. You can purchase a new CD drive at the same places you can buy the cleaner.

Missing CD-ROM fix:
Try this:
Step 1: Start Registry Editor
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK. Registry Editor starts.
Step 2: Delete the UpperFilters registry entry
1. In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the right pane (topic area), click UpperFilters.

Note An UpperFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the UpperFilters registry entry, you must click UpperFilters and not UpperFilters.bak.
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7. When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the UpperFilters registry entry:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The UpperFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.

Note Do not exit Registry Editor. You must have this program for the next step.
Step 3: Delete the LowerFilters registry entry
1. In Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the right pane (topic area), click LowerFilters.

Note An LowerFilters.bak registry entry may also appear. To delete the LowerFilters registry entry, you must click LowerFilters and not LowerFilters.bak.
6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
7. When you receive the following message, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the LowerFilters registry entry:
Are you sure you want to delete this value?
The LowerFilters registry entry is removed from the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} registry subkey.
8. Exit Registry Editor.

Step 4: Restart the computer
If a CD/DVD recording program no longer works after you restart the computer, you must reinstall the CD/DVD recording program.

IF this doesnt do it, make sure your power and data cables are secure at the drive, and motherboard.

 

Thanks for this, I'll give it a go over the weekend and let you know what happens!

 

I have same prob with acer 5920g it vanished after i uninstalled NERO.
Device status says (Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged. (Code 19)

Pleeease Help

 

okay this seems to be a recuring problem for some reason. a problem that i have. and others have had.

see

forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=234646



you will notice that i posted on this thread as well.

i have managed to find a patter to it. sort of....

What is interesting about my situation is that if I update my BIOS firmware the drive appears in the explorer after the first restart. But this only happens with the first restart. Every subsequent restart results in the drive not being displayed.

So if I want to use my optical drive i need to update BIOS. restart. and use. every subsequent restart results in me having to update BIOS and restarting again to be able to use my drive. this method has worked without fail. but is a bit cumbersome.

I had a spare harddrive lying around so i decided to install windows on to it, to have a play in a safe area. I removed the original hdd with the hidden recovery partition because it had important data on it. The spare drive i installed does not have the hidden partition so the ALT+F10 function should not work. The thing is. If i press it at boot-up anyway. The computer beeps like crasy for about 5 seconds and then continues as per normal. BUT the optical drive is visible, if i dont press alt+f10 the optical drive is not displayed. this has also worked without fail.

I want to be able to use my old drive. And i dont want to press alt+f10 every time i boot my comp up with the new drive. ANy ideas what is going on? I'm a bit stumped. AT first i thought that maybe windows1 was corrupting the bios. but two seperate installations are behaving the same way. the drive itself is fine. once i get it to display it works and reads data without any problems. the connections are fine as well. just confusing really. please help.

 

Tried the registry edit, but no change at all.

Having got entirely fed up with the whole thing I bought an external DVD drive and all is fine.

 

Sony DRM CD?