CD/DVD Drive Disappears

Hi, I am still having an issue where sometimes out of the blue, my CD/DVD drive completely disappears as a piece of hardware. Not only under computer, but in the device manager and bios as well.

Tonight for example, I was installing BF2 on my w3j and I heard the device disconnecting sound, and poof my drive was gone. Restarted the machine and it did not showup in bios. Shutdown, reinserted the drive and all was fine again. This has happened maybe three times total. I should also mention I am using Vista Business 64 bit edition.

I called Asus the other day and they are cross-shipping a replacement drive. I have updated my drivers as well. Could this be a problem with my motherboard? Is there a bad connection or could it possibly be software related?

Any input would be appreciated!

Thanks,

Sean

 

This isn't a perfect fit, but there is a Microsoft KB article ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060) for troubleshooting a drive that has quit showing up at all. The gist is below:

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

 

Before you edit the registry, make sure that you make a backup of it(file-export)

 

Thanks Kdawgca...I can't believe I forgot to mention that.

 

yeah, I decided to edit the registry. Forgot to back it up myself. Hopefully though this will fix the issue.

Thanks!

 

If using Vista, I know some had problems with dissapearing or inaccessible DVD drives and they were due to User Access Control. You could try disabling that as well, if the registry edit doesn't solve the problem.

 

EBE, do you think that because it is also missing from the bios at startup that it is a hardware issue vs. software?

It is still getting power, so perhaps the IDE connector for the drive is bad?

 

if missing from BIOS, hardware, clearly

Maybe you're right about the IDE or maybe the ODD is going bad.

 

Yeah, thats what I was afraid of. They are cross-shipping me as we speak a replacement ODD. I will try that first. Hopefully, this will allieviate the issue. If not, guess I will be shipping it to Asus. I just really don't want them to replace my motherboard unless they need to.