Laptop no longer detects DVD drive, usual fix unsuccessful

[Guest]

Hi all,

I bought a Packard Bell laptop in March which runs off Vista. Yesterday I
tried to run a game I had been playing for weeks by clicking the normal icon.
I received an error message stating "We cannot detect a CD-Rom drive on your
system". I tried the same with a variety of other DVDs and received the same
message each time. The DVD drive in question has worked fine up 'til now and
still seems mechanically sound (i.e. it accepts DVDs/open/closes) but it now
also doesn't autorun a DVD on insertion.

I have looked at Device Manager and it now doesn't show a CD or DVD drive at
all. Under Disk Drives it does show a ST912082 2AS SCSI Disk Device with a
message that this is working properly, but I assume this is the hard drive.

I searched the web and found a fix that involves disabling the upper and
lower filters of the relevant class in HKEY_Local_Machine. I did that but
nothing seems to have changed following the restart - the computer still
doesn't recognise that a DVD drive even exists. It looks like this problem
normally occurs when you upgrade or switch to Vista. In my case, the DVD
drive has been recognised for months by Vista, but now, suddenly, it is not.
I can't think of anything I've installed or uninstalled in the last few days
which may have led to this.

I'm currently backpacking in some quite remote places so support is
difficult to find, so any suggestions very gratefully received! Sorry for
such a long post, but hope it's thorough.

Kind regards
Sean

 

[Malke]

Hi all,

I bought a Packard Bell laptop in March which runs off Vista. Yesterday I
tried to run a game I had been playing for weeks by clicking the normal icon.
I received an error message stating "We cannot detect a CD-Rom drive on your
system". I tried the same with a variety of other DVDs and received the same
message each time. The DVD drive in question has worked fine up 'til now and
still seems mechanically sound (i.e. it accepts DVDs/open/closes) but it now
also doesn't autorun a DVD on insertion.

I have looked at Device Manager and it now doesn't show a CD or DVD drive at
all. Under Disk Drives it does show a ST912082 2AS SCSI Disk Device with a
message that this is working properly, but I assume this is the hard drive.

I searched the web and found a fix that involves disabling the upper and
lower filters of the relevant class in HKEY_Local_Machine. I did that but
nothing seems to have changed following the restart - the computer still
doesn't recognise that a DVD drive even exists. It looks like this problem
normally occurs when you upgrade or switch to Vista. In my case, the DVD
drive has been recognised for months by Vista, but now, suddenly, it is not.
I can't think of anything I've installed or uninstalled in the last few days
which may have led to this.

I'm currently backpacking in some quite remote places so support is
difficult to find, so any suggestions very gratefully received! Sorry for
such a long post, but hope it's thorough.

Thanks for the excellent post. Very good details. See if the drive is
detected in the BIOS. When you first start the computer there will be a
line that shows you what key to press to enter Setup (the BIOS). If the
drive is not seen there, it is a hardware problem. With some laptops you
can remove the optical drive and put it back in again. Sometimes this
fixes whatever wasn't physically making contact. If not, the drive or
the motherboard controller for the drive may have died and I don't see
what you can do about it in the Back Of Beyond. If the drive *is* seen
in the BIOS, the normal way I like to check in these cases is by booting
a rescue system on a CD like Knoppix or a Bart's PE. Unless you've got
one of these in your backpack, this is going to be pretty hard to do
where you are.

Accessing the BIOS
http://michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm
http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/reference/biosp.htm
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000235.htm


Malke