no letter assigned to DVD driver

I bought a new Asus computer for my son. There is no letter assigned for the DVD drive in my computer. When he puts a DVD into the drive he gets an error message saying there is no drive; however, if he reboots the computer with a CD in the drive, it will read it for a bit. This computer runs a Vista and he was wanting to update to the Windows 7 and this is when it's happening. He went to the Microsoft pages and ran the auto fix and it says that it fixes the problem and then to reboot; however, after the reboot he's in the same situation..no letter assigned to the drive. Any help would be appreciated (as you can see I'm not real computer savy :-oso please let me know what other information you'll need). Thanks for all of your help in advance!
Debbie

 

Hi.
What is the model name?
Like asus ______.
Thanks!

 

Go into Drive Management and see if the drive shows up on that list. There might be a chance that there is another drive that is trying to overtake that specific drive letter. If that is the case, you can re-assign the device to another drive letter.

But, do not reassign the main HDD a new drive letter. It's best that the OS keeps what was originally set.

 

It's an Asus G71gx. He's having issues with the CD/DVD and also with the USB ports.

Right now he's going through all the steps for malware that is on this site, so he'll look in the manager thing after this next part runs.

Thanks again!

 

Try this. When it boots up, right at the beginning when you have the Asus logo, it should say Press __ to go to Boot Menu or something similar. See if there is something about drive diagnostics.