cd/dvd rom randomly stopped functioning (sz240p with vista)

I got vista home premium a week or so ago, and Sony has really made it a nightmare getting things working properly thanks to horrible driver support and poor instructions. Although I got everything working, for some reason just today, my CD/DVD rom no longer works. It shows up in the device manager with a yellow "!" and gives the following error:

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Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Click 'Check for solutions' to send data about this device to Microsoft and to see if there is a solution available.
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clicking check for solutions is useless and does nothing more than pop up a window for about 5 seconds and dissapear.

when i click update driver, it says "Windows has determined the driver sofware for your device is up to date." and thus, wont install a new one.

if I uninstall it then do the check for new hardware, after it detects it, and tries to install a driver, it gives me an error saying: "Please consult with your device manufacturer for assistance getting this device installed. MATHITA UJ-842D ATA Device - Failed"

i found something with that name on the sony website, but it was a firmware update thing that did nothing. what in the world could have caused this and what can i do to fix it???

this is getting ridiculous.

also, my cd/dvd rom worked fine for the week up untill now, and i used it to install several cd-based programs.

 

no one?

maybe i should post this on a microsoft.com webboard.

 

my dvd rom just stopped working too, i need help fixing it without sending it back to sony, because i can't live without it.

 

I did a system restore, and the drive is recognized again. i didnt know where it was, so i just typed it in the start menu search and there it was. i saw nothing of importance other than a windows update, so i clicked to restore to the time just before that. restored and rebooted, and voila it works! dont know for how long though... i'm going to check the updates to see which one (if thats what it was) that screwed it up.

 

Bumping this up. Same EXACT problem for me as of this morning 4/13/07. Tried multiple system restores, complete backup restore, and now I'm going to do one of my earliest restore points. If that doesn't work then I'm doing a clean restore of the whole c drive.

 

Hello, i have same problem on my aser aspire 5920g ,vista. but i know why this problem pups up.... its becouse one vista update messed up somthing i don´t know yet how to fix this but i know what you had to do so it wont happen now... dunno hows on your laptops but on acers managing all backup on cd/dvd rom would let it boot again after that patch... vista screwed up bad, tho i heard some people needed to reinstall their windows, but thats what ive heard

 

This has been discussed in 100's of threads.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

This works in vista too.