Disappearing DVD drive--not an upper or lower filter issue

[Guest]

OK, I am trying to help a couple guys out both suffering from this same
issue on Vista installations.

On both computers the DVD drives were working fine one day and then
disappeared the next; on one computer. One computer has sp1; the other is a
dual boot with out sp1.

There are no upper or lower filters listed in
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

The following keys do not exist
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdr4_2K
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdralw2k
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdudf
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UdfReadr

They have tried uninstalling the secondary controllers that both drives are
connected to and rebooting--the secondary controllers are reinstalled as
expected, but the drives do not return.

The first drive, the one with sp1 being installed, is a TSST corp cd dvdw
sn-s082n. This drive worked flawlessly for months and suddenly disappeared.
There is no dvd (optical drive) listed in explorer, device manager, or disk
management. No relevant errors in event viewer. The drive is recognized at
bootup by bios, you can boot with a live linux cd with no problems. It was
used to install Vista. It's worth noting this drive is NOT on the HCL list,
though similar models are (s082d, for example)

The second drive is Optiarc 7530A/C. This drive NEVER worked in Vista. There
is no dvd (optical drive) listed in explorer, device manager, or disk
management. No relevant errors in event viewer. The drive is recognized at
bootup by bios, you can boot with a live linux cd with no problems. It is on
a dual boot machine and works flawlessly with Windows XP. It ALSO was used
to install Vista. However, it's worth noting this drive is NOT on the HCL
list, though similar models are (s082d, for example).

The first case is irritating since it worked flawlessly and then one day
stopped. I also know several people with this DVD drive and it works fine on
identical laptops. One thing worth noting on this laptop is that it had
difficulty with an sp1 install. During the sp1 install, the computer froze
and did not complete. The user rolled back the system and the DVD was
working still. He then reinstalled sp1 without incident. He noticed several
days later the DVD disappeared--he cannot say with certainty if he used the
DVD after the sp1 install or not. I cannot help but think damaged atapi
layer.

My inclination on the second one is to chalk it up to not being on the HCL,
but it bothers me that you could install Vista with it, and it works
everywhere else.

Thoughts?

 

[Guest]

Itunes is not installed--however, the reason that Itunes kills optical
drives is because it inserts upper and lower filter registry entries, which
I noted in the original post do not exist and never existed.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

 

[Peter Foldes]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939052/en-us

or


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929461

 

[George Yin]

Hello,

Do you mean that:

On the first machine, the DVD drive disappeared some days after it had been
working flawlessly. However, when you want to install Windows Vista SP1 on
this machine, you found the installation hung.

On the second machine, the DVD drive never appeared after the system was
installed.

You have tried to check the Registry similarly as the steps listed in the
following article but didn't find any upper or lower filters:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929461

If I have any misunderstanding, please let me know.

For the first machine:
=============

Firstly, I would like to double check if you or them were doing anything,
like installing programs or enabling services or configuring the system,
when the problem happened.

Would you please try a clean boot to see if it can help? Try uninstalling
all the applications (especially the burning applications) to see how it
goes. Or, try logging into Safe Mode to see how it goes.

However, as you also mentioned that the machine cannot install Windows
Vista SP1, I would suspect that there might be some incompatible
applications are running on that machine. Or, even the hardware do not
support Windows Vista very well.

For the second machine:
===============

From you description, you mentioned that the DVD drive never appeared after
the system was installed, this sounds very like that the hardware is
incompatible with Windows Vista. Specifically, there might be some hardware
conflicts or even the hardware does not support Windows Vista.

For both computers, I would suggest that you contact the hardware
manufacturers to see if the hardware can support Windows Vista and, if they
have any information on this or if they have any updating for the firmware.
Saying this is because, we do have seen many similar problems and most of
them are caused by the incompatible hardware.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,
George Yin
Microsoft Online Support
Microsoft Global Technical Support Center

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[Guest]

Thank you for your response

1st machine
Yes, the optical drive was functioning before the installation of sp1.
During the installation of sp1, the machine hung. He rebooted, Vista came
up, but he was uncomfortable with the hang, so he uninstalled sp1.

However, he then REINSTALLED sp1.

It was several days later he noticed that the optical drive was then
missing. We are uncertain if it was immediately after the sp1 install that
the drive disappeared or not.

Yes, checked the registry as per kb929461--there were no upper or lower
filter settings.

We have rebooted in safe mode--no drive
We have removed all burning programs--no drive
All services are set to default settings

Also, recall that the drive works fine with linux live boot disks, so we
know it is still working. It is also recognized during hardware
initialization when the PC first boots before windows loads. It is also
recognized with a windows xp cd we used to load the old recovery
console --we did not perform any xp recovery functions on the disk, we just
wanted to see if it would see the drive.

We have not performed a VISTA startup repair, however, which is our next
step.

I'd go with the drive not being supported by Vista too, if it was not for
the fact it worked fine, and an identical drive with identical firmware
works fine. This machine is fairly new.

On the second pc, I am fairly convinced this is an HCL issue as the drive
was never recognized by Vista, is not on the HCL and the manufacturer is one
I have never heard of, though I understand they are owned by sony. The
second machine was originally an xp machine upgraded to vista.

As for hardware conflict--wouldn't that appear in device manager if that
were so?

There is no evidence in windows anywhere that either drive on either machine
exists...nothing in device manager, nothing in event viewer..it is as if
there is no drive installed at all.

 

[Guest]

Thank you Peter

kb939052 is not applicable to this situation as the drive is not even
visible in explorer, device manger or drive manager

kb929461 is the first thing we tried.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Are the drives connected physically at all. Checked the connections???

 

[Rod]

Well, I seem to have a similar issue. I posted about a year ago re this, but
no 'fix' forthcoming...I was told SP1 may address it but alas...

My PC has 2 internall HDDs, a CD Drive and a DVD Drive.

Completely randomly one or other of the CD/DVD drives will simply dissapear
and only a reboot will see it return.

I tried the Upper/Lower filters 'fix' today, removing both items from
Registry after backing them up, only to find BOTH drives gone...so reapplied
from backup and they're both back.

I just did a CD Copy using Roxio EZCD Creator 9, FROM a CD in the CD drive
to a CD in the DVD Drive, copy went faultlessly, BUT as soon as completed,
yep, the CD drive had disappeared from list of visible drives.

Reboot, it's back!

This is my only issue with Vista now, and it drives me nuts!

Rgds
Rod

 

[George Yin]

Hello,

For the first computer, I am sorry to say that it is really hard to find
out the root cause. The incomplete installation might cause some system
files corrupted, though the next installation succeeded. And as he could
not tell when the DVD drive disappeared, it is hard to narrow down the root
cause (might be hardware or software incompatible issue, also might be
corrupted system files).

If you have any other DVD drive, I would suggest replacing the existing one
to see if that can make any difference. If not, you may need to reinstall
the operating system to get the DVD drive back.

For the second computer, that could be an incompatible DVD drive (HCL
issue).

We have some web sites to check this incompatible information (including
hardware and software). Would you please go to the following two web sites
to see if any of them are listed there?

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/Default.aspx

http://winqual.microsoft.com/hcl/

Sincerely,
George Yin
Microsoft Online Support
Microsoft Global Technical Support Center

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
=====================================================
When responding to posts, please "Reply to Group" via your newsreader so
that others may learn and benefit from your issue.
=====================================================
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.