Need help Presario f700 dvd drive missing out of ideas

Hello all, i have a compaq presairo f700 laptop that has had the dvd drive go missing, to be honest im not sure of the exact time this happened because i only used the laptop for school before but of course once i need to use it its missing....

Background: bought the laptop in 08 loaded with vista, HATED it and when 7 came out i was offered a great deal on it through my college and i upgraded, i also put SP1 on it yesterday. i KNOW for a fact that the drive was working after the OS change, it just up and disapeared on me one day, Ive had my friend look at it whos been going to school for this for the past couple years, hes baffled, ive had my brother look at it as well (25B in the army, computer work....) both of them are confused and when i googled : presario f700 d.... it instant populates dvd drive missing, all the pages have problems but no fix...

On my side i have personally checked my computer: no drive listed, device manager: no dvd drive listed, checked the BIOS: No drive listed. I havent attempted to delete the upper and lower filters yet but from what i see it hasnt made much of a difference for anyone. Ive also downloaded every single update from windows as soon as it popped up (computer was off for a while and fell behind apparently)

I have tried putting a cd in and it will light up, i can hear/feel it spin the computer just isnt getting the information, I have also verified my drive is good by taking my dvd drive out and placing it in another f700 which had a known good drive, after swapping my drive worked in the other computer and the good one wouldnt work in mine.... so its not a hardware malfunction, theres no dirt, dust debris etc on either side of the dvd drive plug

Im totally out of ideas on this.... im frustrated and id like this fixed i use my computer alot at work now and need to be able to burn cds for work.

If ANYONE can help me i would be eternally grateful, ive had plenty of people tell me to just buy a new laptop but for one, i cant afford a new one. and two i like to repair things and keep them working ( i just replaced the main board in my gen 1 zune if thats any indication) i just hate to dispose of something thats so expensive when it can be fixed

 

Here's the long and the short of this. You're tough out of luck like me. I have been searching for days for the answer to the question "what happened to my drive?" and am no closer than I was before. I have the same type of problem. I have never installed roxio or ipod or anything else listed that has known windows problems. The drive doesn't show up in the bios or in the device manager. I did manage to see it in the event viewer but information given didn't help. I would delete upper and lower values in the registry if they were listed but they're not. I would reinstall drivers if it let you without having the device show up. The drive works because I have two of these computers. My other computer did the same thing for a while but I had to send it in for warranty repairs and when it came back it started working. The disc drive was not the thing they worked on. Tried factory reinstall but no good. Tried fixit and several other "fixes" online but nothing yet. Personally, I think vista is the problem but I can't figure out what it's doing. I know your post is relatively old but if you find a solution, pass it on.

Good luck, Mate.