Lost my CD/DVD Drive-Windows 7

Majic

To confirm, have had no joy removing both the upper and lower filters and there is no sign of the drive on my machine.

closed

check the bios screen to see if the drive is visible, not windows

Majic

How do I check the bios screen?

Majic

OK-I've managed to check the BIOS screen. There is no mention of my cd/dvd drive the only thing it mentions under 'storage'?? is

Sata:3m-STM3500418

which I assume is nothing to do with my cd/dvd drive

Sublime_2

You could try Rizone Cd-DVD Repair, which claims to fix missing drives. I've not used, but might be worth a shot.

Majic

I tried to follow the link but after that it took me to a different product.

I've just tried both Apple and Microsoft helplines and they say they can't help. (Apple because they don't have the expertise and Microsoft because it is a hardware issue I need to contact the supplier of my PC or look for drivers @Support.microsoft.com.

sillygoose

Windows 7 is notorious for this lack of helpfulness... happened to me too, presume its a SATA DVD drive? SATA DVD drives are the real culprits though.

Some of the well known fixes have been mentioned. Another cause is temperature issues. Proved by turning the PC completely off and leaving a good while, boot up and if the drive reappears then after some time disappears again it may help to move it in the PC case to a cooler slot. Rebooting rapidly before things cool down shows up as it doesn't come back at even briefly then.

I EVENTUALLY found mine to be down to a cheap poor over long SATA cable, routed so the connectors had some stress on them, probably picking up electrical noise. A much shorter, locking, better quality SATA cable (about £2 on ebay) fixed it forever, well PC has been on nearly non stop for manyvweeks now without any problem... worth a try.

Sublime_2

Sublime wrote: »

You could try Rizone Cd-DVD Repair, which claims to fix missing drives. I've not used, but might be worth a shot.

Apologies. Try this link from Softpedia, which is a 100% safe one.

Majic

Thanks Sublime-The link subsequently takes me to a product called registry reviver (not Rizone CD-DVD Repair) is this the same thing?

Can you guys see my post 25 above-is this actually my dvd drive and is is listed after all?

esuhl

Majic wrote: »

Can you guys see my post 25 above-is this actually my dvd drive and is is listed after all?

It looks like that device is a Maxtor 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 hard drive.

As I mentioned before, this is unlikely to be a software problem if you can't see the drive listed in the BIOS configuration.