intermittent disappearing optical drive

[budu]

Hi, I have a 6 months old computer, and my optical drive disappeared
at least 5 times since then, it is very annoying. Only rebooting can
fix the problem, else the drive cannot be found either in the computer
manager or explorer. No warning or error messages are shown in the
event viewer. I extensively tried all suggested solution found on the
internet to no avail. Most of them does not even apply to my situation
anyway. I never installed any burning program or something that could
affect the optical drive, there's no lowerFilter or higherFilter
registry key to be found anywhere. This machine is super clean, the
cleanest Windows installation I ever had. It's running XP SP3 and have
a PIONEER DVR-115D drive plugged using SATA cable, my mobo is a
Gygabyte S-series GA-G33M-S2L with ICH9. AHCI is disabled, because
Windows doesn't even boot if it's enabled! That's the only problem I
ever had with this machine.

Can someone help me.

P.S.: [rant]After coming back to Windows a year and a half ago, I
really wished things were better than in the bad old days of 98SE/Me/
2000. Yes, stability has improved tremendously (and we can now copy
large file, yeah!!!), but I feel as "not in control" of my operating
system as before. I like being able to fix things myself, but the
horrible MS knowledge base is still the same maddening labyrinth that
it was back in the days. It's just got worst as half the links you can
find are pointing to "Page not found".[/rant]

 

[R. McCarty]

SATA cables are notorious for connection issues. I'd recommend you
buy a "90-Degree Angle" cable that allows the connection to the drive
to remain snug. There are also SATA cables with clips that can help to
keep a connection from slipping.
Also all Optical drives have Firmware flash updates to address issues
and make improvements. I'd check your vendor's website and see if
any new/later version Flash modules are available for your unit.

 

[Shaun]

The disappearance could be an optical illusion ; - )