Dvd Drive Not Visible In User Account In File Explorer

Windows 10 Home 64 bit
HP laptop with built-in DVD/CD drive

I have two accounts - Administrator & Standard User. In the administrator account, the DVD drive is visible in file explorer. However in the user account, the DVD drive is NOT visible in file explorer. In the user account in file explorer, I made sure that the option "Hide empty drives in the Computer folder" is not checked. How do I fix this problem? Do I have to uninstall / reinstall the DVD drive? Or is there another fix?

Thank you.

 

First try the simple way:-

1. Press WinKey + R to open run, type 'devmgmt.msc' and press enter or click OK to open device manager.
2. Find your disk drive under DVD/CD-ROM drives header and right-click.
3. Click uninstall to remove the device.
4. Restart Windows.
5. Repeat step 1 to enter device manager.
6. In the menu bar you'll see a monitor with a magnifying glass (image attached), click that to check for new hardware.
7. See if the drive shows up in explorer. If not check back here.

 

Thank you for your help!! Unfortunately this did not work. I did the uninstall. When I restarted, Windows reinstalled the driver without me having to day anything. I still had device mgr check for new hardware & checked to see if there is newer version of driver - there was not.
Situation -- DVD drive shows up in file explorer for the Admin account but NOT for the User account.
Am I perhaps doing something wrong in file explorer?
Anything else you can suggest?

 

Okay next step, assign it a drive letter, or different drive letter.

1. Press WinKey + R to open run, type 'compmgmt.msc' and press enter or click OK to open Computer Management.
2. On the left panel, locate 'Storage' and click 'Disk Management'.
3. Scroll in the middle bottom panel to find CD-ROM X (image attached).
4. If it doesn't have a drive letter, right click to open the context menu and click 'Change drive letters and paths...' to open a tool window.
5. Click 'Add', select 'Assign the following drive letter', choose a letter from the dropdown combobox (image attached).
6. Click OK, then enter explorer to see if the drive has appeared.

If it has a letter, do this same process but change the letter instead. Check back again if you have the same issue. I don't think you're doing anything wrong, probably Win10 being the typical silly arse and something small has gone wrong.

 

Again thank you!!!!! Wellll, did not work. The drive was "D", I changed it to "E". Visible in Admin account file explorer but NOT in user account file explorer.
If I go to the user account and in file explorer I type "E:" in explorer path bar on top, explorer does navigate to the drive. BUt the drive does not show in explorer. Really weird.

I agree with you that Win10 is being disagreeable. By the way, this is a brand new HP laptop purchase one week ago so the Win10 installation should be clean, (Right?)

 

Maybe Upper and Lower filters are corrupted. I recommend creating a system restore from this point please as we're messing in the registry. Please make sure to do this from the troublesome account, not the Administrator account.

Start Regedit as Administrator and navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}'. In the right hand panel, right click 'LowerFilters' and delete the key, then right click 'UpperFilters' and delete that key also. Close Regedit.

Also, just for uniformity now open command prompt as Administrator and copy/paste this without quotes "reg.exe add “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Controller0” /f /v EnumDevice1 /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001".

Then reboot and check your drive. If you're asked for a password in the UAC prompts, put in the password for your administrator account, this is applicable if you're like me and use a local account with low privileges for security.

 

There may be multiple keys with the identifier ''{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}", it will be the one with CD-ROM in the class. Image attached.

You may need to navigate through until you find the key.

 

Are you ready for this? The latest solution did not fix the problem. I even searched the registry and "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" is nowhere in the registry associated with the key 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318.
What a weird problem, eh?
Any other thoughts?

 

Could you please post a DxDiag report? I've said everything I can really think that solves this issue.

WinKey+R > dxdiag > OK > Save all information...

Many thanks! Hopefully we get to the bottom of it. I'd say just reset W10, but that seems a bit too much hassle for a missing optical drive.

 

Attached is the dxdiag report. I must say this is the weirdest problem....

 

plodr --- Would you believe, tghe DVD drive is now visible in all account in File Explorer. I swear I did nothing but suddenly it is visible. Sooo, all is right with the world.
Thank you so much for your help -- much appreciated!!!!!!

 

No worries. I'm glad it has been solved.