Broken disc drive E: HELP!!

Hello, I am running Windows Vista Home Basic and for no reason whatsoever, my E: has stopped working. When I access the hardware in my device manager, I get this message.

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

However when I check for solutions, it comes back that my driver is up to date and working properly.

Please tel me what to do before I go insane and run the computer over with my car. Thanks. My email address is mrandmrsbraae@gmail.com Pat

I also have a computer running windows xp home edition that I installed an older 6 gb hard drive in the slave position for extra storage and then I ran a system restore back to factory settings and now it keeps telling me that my virtual memory is too low and I get the blue screen of death along with a fatal error. I have un-plugged the extra hard drive now but the problem persists and it won't let me run my system restore anymore now either and to top it all off, both of my computers came with software already installed on them so I don't have any of the OS discs. I can't shoot the computers and I can't get them to work right. What can I do?

 

Try reading this, http://adrynalyne.colemanguy.com/CD.html. Hope this helps.
And welcome to Major Geeks!

 

Ok I tried both of the options on that page and the icon is back in my computer for the disc drive however when I click on it, it says that application not found.

 

Glad that it partially helped at least! However, you didn't mention in your first post that the DVD icon was missing in My Computer. Did you install or uninstall any applications recently?

You mentioned that your computer came with the OS installed and the lack of disks, does it have a recovery partition on the hard drive? Most OEMs do this.

Have you uninstalled the DVD ROM in Device Manager and rebooted to see if it would work?

In the event that you have already tried all the above, the only other thing that I could find that may help was this, http://www.itsmywindows.com/solution-or-fix-error-application-not-found-when-click-on-cddvd-drive.

Other members may have some better fixes or suggestions.

 

Thanks for that you have been a great help. I got it working to play my cd's again so now I can finish backing up all of my media before I run a restore on the computer.

 

Glad that you got it going! Just out of curiosity, which of the last suggestions worked?

 

It was after I downloaded the other registry. I inserted a disc and somehow it forced the computer to recognize it. Then I re-set my autoplay options and even had to re-direct my burning software to the drive in order for it to burn a disc. Thanks for your help.