missing CD/DVD drive

Hi all. I'm working on the laptop from Hades again with a different prob. this time. My neighbor brought it over and said the CD/DVD drv. worked intermittently, then disappeared altogether.

I looked it over and saw that it wasn't showing in Computer, nor Device Mgr., so I've been all over the internet and did these:
Deleted LowerFilters in Reg. Edit. (UpperFilters wasn't listed)--rebooted--no
success
Physically removed and re-inserted the drv.--no success
Ran MS FixIt--no success
Booted into Safe Mode--drv. is not shown there either
Ck'd. "dumbed down" PhoenixBIOS Setup vF.34--headings were Main, Security, System Configuration, Diagnostics, and Exit. In System Configu-
ration>Boot Options>Boot Order:

ATAPI CD/DVD ROM Drive (I can hear the drv. "bump" during bootup)
Notebook Hard Drive
USB Diskette On Key
USB Hard Drive
Network Adapter

I let it go for a few days as I had others to work on, then she showed up up with a new drv. and insisted I install it. I told her I didn't think the drv. was at fault, but I installed it as she DID NOT want the old drv. back in it. When I booted into Windows, it found the new drv. and was shown in Computer and Device Mgr. After testing it with different CDs, DVDs, etc., all seemed OK until I tried to install MS Works (it got about halfway thru, then just sat there--no CD/DVD drv.activity whatsoever. I ck'd. Computer and Device Mgr.--no CD/DVD again!!!!!!!

I'm not a pc expert, so I'm now at a standstill. Could someone please help me fix this issue? It's driving me to drink more. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

HP Pavilion dv9610us
1.9GHz AMD Turion 64x2
1GB RAM
Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP2

 

No suggestions yet. This is starting to worry me now.

 

Hi i had similar problems with my dvd/cd drive so i took it out and got name and model off it and typed it in to Google to find manufacturers website and got driver updates.

Also you could try rolling back the drive in device manager or even un-installing and scanning for new hardware then try restarting laptop.

Seems as it works sometimes i most likely to be a driver issue.

Hope it helped a little.

 

Thanks for the reply matty..., but HP doesn't offer any driver for this laptop that I could find, and, the drv. doesn't show in Device Mgr. So there's no way to roll back anything, nor uninstall it. I've scanned for new hardware and it doesn't find anything there either.

 

Hp won't if the disc drive you say that was bought to replace the original wasn't Hp. You should take the drive back out and look on the label on the drive and see what name and model number is wrote on then find your driver. Most of the time each company Hp,dell,acer only give updates for the controller which still wouldn't always fix this problem anyway

Hope i can help

 

matty, the new drv. is an HP with the exact model # as the old if that helps.

 

Have you tried typing the make and model into Google rather than HP website it self. Is the disc drive recognised in BIOS. It might be that the new disc drive as lost is assigned disc letter in wish case if you search Google for how to resign a disc drive letter you might get it working again. (i say search Google cos not sure the exact steps for each windows operator. Hope this helps

 

yup matty.. I've Googled the HP Multi DVD Rewriter GSA-T20L (S05D) and can't find anything for it (unless I've missed it somewhere along the line.

The drv. is, indeed, recognized in BIOS and I can change Boot Order from it to HD, or vice versa.

Thanks for hanging in here with me on this. It's startin' to irritate me.

 

What windows are you running on the laptop that's having the problem ill try and find the guide for resigning the drive letter could of lost it with it been a new drive

 

Right click on "My Computer" and then on "Manage". There you will find the "DiskManagement" console where you can assign it a drive letter.

Resign the drive as D: this might already be as D: but just resign it as that save and restart worth a try.

 

matty...this prob. was doing the disappearing act with the old drv. as with this new one.

I've already been to Disk Mgt. with both the new and old drvs. thinking along the same line u are, but it only shows the C:\ drv. as Simple>Basic>NTFS>Primary Partition. The Rec. Partition was deleted and merged with the Primary Partition last month as per instructions from a pc guru with an unrelated prob.

 

Hey all. I borrowed an HP dv6000 and the new drive works perfect in it.

 

Should've elaborated. I borrowed an HP dv6000 and the optical drive works perfect in it, but when I put it back in this laptop Vista still doesn't see it.

Problem STILL not solved. Getting desperate now.

 

plodr, I concur with you. She didn't want to go with an external and brought this internal, but she may have to go that route anyway, or do w/o one altogether because I've done EVERYTHING that you and others on other forums have suggested and still no success. I've already got way too many hrs. in this old heifer the way it is. lol

 

Hi guys,
My first post in this forum.
I have the same problem in my HP Pavilion dv6700 laptop.
Didn't use the dvd rom in a while and then when wanted to use it, it was just gone. Googled it and couldn't solve it.
Looked for the lower and upper filters in registry - they dont exist.
reset the machine to factory settings, its still missing.
A professor in my school told me to change the boot order and it might work. I came home and did it and to my surprise the rom drive was available. I tried to install linux from a CD and at the same time windows update started, at the end of the update it prompted to restart and when the machine restarted, the rom drive was gone again. I removed the drive out of the machine and reinserted, still nothing. one thing i noticed, when i open the cd tray by pocking it with a paper clip, the cd motor will be spinning.
I repeated the same steps starting from factory reset but its not working. the cd rom drive is missing from my computer, device manager, and even from boot menu.
I have Vista in the laptop.

 

Daaku, I never did get the problem solved. I told her to get an external optical
USB drive. Don't know if she did or not, 'cause I haven't heard anything from her. No news is good news.

I still would've liked to have solved the issue tho--I'm thinking there MUST have been a bad connection to the MoBo, but I'm not experienced enough to go that deep. lol