clevo m570u upgraded to windows 7 and now has no cd player

I decided to upgrade from XP so I purchased windows 7 home premium OEM along with a new external drive for backup from my local store.

I completely reformatted the drive and installed Windows 7. It all went smoothly. I also installed Ubuntu 10.10 and got them dual booting nicely.

Ubuntu worked perfectly and Windows 7 looked good (had to add the card reader driver manually but otherwise ok). I installed the Microsoft security centre and adobe reader on Windows but no other software (yet)

I prefer the Ubuntu for general use but need Windows for government tax softare and a few other bits and pieces.

It wasn't until I inserted a CD into the Windows 7 that I realised the drive was not being recognised even though I'd used it to install windows and its working perfectly in Ubuntu.

I checked through this thread to no avail.

I don't know what the OEM loader is or whether its appropriate to fixing this issue in Windows 7. My windows 7 is legal and activated.

How can I get Windows 7 to recognise the cd/dvd writer?

 

I guess the first step is to check to see if its in the device manager? If so does it have an exclamation point on it? Or does it not show up in the device manager? If it doesn't is windows complaining about not having drivers for devices?

 

There are no driver issues. I had to manually install the card reader which showed up as a 'mass storage device'.

The cd drive is not showing and if I ask it to detect devices it does not find it.

 

Ok, and I'm assuming the drive shows up in Linux ok?

Hmm, at that point my guess would be to try to re-install windows to see what it does at that point, which I know will probably break the dual-boot. But the windows bootloader is a wacky thing sometimes. And its worth a shot, especially if its recognized in the BIOS and in Linux.

 

Did you try pulling the drive out and putting it back in while in Windows?

It might refresh itself with the newly found connection, and automatically find drivers for it.

 

The cd is working absolutely fine in Ubuntu Linux with the default installation.

I don't know how to pull the drive out - Its built in on the left hand side. Is that something that I can do with the machine running?

I could re-install windows but this is a clean new installation so what would go differently?

 

Hmm, for Dell machines, there is a easy pop-out button.

You might need to try to connect the drive newly while in windows for it to refresh itself.

 

disconnecting/reconnecting PATA (IDE) devices inside windows is not generally recommended

 

Oh, I assumed it was SATA, which supports plug and play..

 

Unfortunately it is IDE so I am still stuck.

It seems bizarre that I can install Windows 7 using the drive, I can see the drive in the bios and see it working perfectly in Ubuntu but Windows 7 does not see the drive at all.

 

Make sure you don't change from IDE mode to AHCI mode in BIOS without reinstalling Vista / Windows 7 as it may become unstable. Not sure about Linux.

 

After talking to a few people I decided to re-install with the 32 bit version of windows. Problem solved! It seems that the best fix is to not use Windows 7 64 bit on the clevo m570u.

It did trash my dual boot but as the whole installation was fresh I can cope with that by re-installing Ubuntu again.

If anyone has an old laptop like the clevo I recommend going with Ubuntu 32bit Linux rather than Windows. Ubuntu is much better at dealing with the older drivers and, while its slightly slower to boot, it doesn't hang on hibernating and seems to run slightly faster once its up.

 

Glad you were able to get it sorted out!