CD/DVD Drives Not Showing

M

Mribaul

Why doesnt my CD/DVD drives show up in My Computer?! Everytime I reinstall
VISTA it appears, but after a while theyre not there? And when I put XP on
the machine, it never happens. Only in VISTA, first I thought theyre not
supported but when I first install VISTA theyre there...then as I said...give
it a month and they dont show up and when I put a disc in nothing happens and
I cant even type in their location ex. D:/ WHY?
 
R

R. C. White

Hi, Mribaul.

First of all, "My Computer" is a WinXP term which does not exist in Vista
except as a "Junction" that points legacy applications to the correct
location in Vista. In Vista, the term is "Computer". (There are similar
junctions for "My Pictures", "My Documents", etc., pointing to
C:\Users\Mribaul\Documents, for example.)

Do your CD/DVD drives show up in Disk Management? Many users have not yet
found this very useful utility. You can get to it in several ways; the
shortest is to click Start, type "diskmgmt.msc" (without quotes), and press
Enter. Or you can click Start | Control Panel | Administrative Tools |
Computer Management | Disk Management. Either way, you'll need to furnish
Administrator credentials.

Disk Management is the tool to manage many kinds of devices, hard drives,
optical drives, network drives, USB flash drives, cameras and card readers,
just about any kind of device that gets assigned a "drive" letter. We can
let Vista assign a new letter each time we log on or plug in a new device,
or we can use Disk Management to (semi-)permanently assign the letter we
want to each device. If we don't assign letters, our CD drive may be Drive
E: this time and Drive G: next time after we've plugged in a couple of USB
thumb drives. The devices will not show up in Computer until a letter has
been assigned, either automatically or specifically in Disk Management.

Tell us what Disk Management says about your optical drives and then we can
go from there.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
M

Mribaul

Hey thanks for responding. I opened Computer Management then went to Disk
Management, the only thing that shows up are my hard drives. My CD/DVD drives
are not listed. I just dont understand how they are there one day and gone
the next. Is there anything else I should check? Oh also, I have check
Device Manager, and they ARE listed there under DVD/CD-ROM drives but they
both have a yellow exclamation mark next to them. I have tried reinstalling
the drivers for both of the, but it tells me that I have the latest drivers
installed.
 
R

R. C. White

Hi, Mribaul.

Well, I was hoping someone would jump in with the magic answer, but... :>(

There have been similar complaints from other users: drives - especially
CD/DVD but sometimes other types - here yesterday and gone today. It's hard
to find the common threads to try to pin down the cause and fix. I can
think of a couple of ideas.

First, what is the interface for your CD/DVD drives? The common IDE (also
known as ATA or PATA)? Or SCSI or SATA or USB or some other? And what
interface are your hard drives? Mixing the types can often confuse the
BIOS. We see this often when we want to boot from a SATA HD but also have
an IDE HD installed, for example. And sometimes, adding a USB flash drive
after letters have already been assigned by default to existing optical
drives can change the letters and cause confusion.

Second, have you tried disconnecting the CD/DVD drives completely and
booting a couple of times without them? We used to do this in WinXP to let
the OS kind of "clear its head" and forget that any drivers had ever been
installed. Then we'd power down, plug in the drives, and boot up again to
let them be detected again from scratch and let new drivers be installed.
It often worked. It might even help to plug in one drive now and the other
after the first one is working.

I hope someone comes up with better ideas than those. Please keep us
informed. In a newsgroup, we all learn from each other, and you may have
something to teach us soon. ;<)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64)
 
J

Jane C

<blush>

You're welcome :)

--
Jane, not plain ;) 64 bit enabled :)
Batteries not included. Braincell on vacation ;-)
MVP Windows Shell/User


Hey Jane I could kiss you. this has just worked for me. YIPPDEEDOOOOO
 

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