Laptop not recognising CD & DVD/CD-rom drives missing from Device Manager

littlemoney

I have a Levono thinkpad E560 with windows 7 pro which I purchased new in June 2016. This evening I put a CD in the drive and it didn't play and wasn't displayed in windows explorer. I treid several CD's without any success. When I insert a CD I can hear what I assume is the CD rotating for a short while but nothing happens and no drive letter is shown in explorer.

Hunting the internet suggested looking at Device Manager and DVD/CD-rom drives within it. When I look in device manager I can't see DVD/CD-rom drives option. Is this causing my problem. I am not aware of deleting anything but I haven't used the CD drive for a couple of months. Sorry not very tech savy and am worried about making anything worse.

Help please what have I done, all be it inadvertly and how can I fix it please

bsod

music cd's that worked in the same laptop two months ago? what have you installed or uninstalled in those two months, itunes?

littlemoney

I have not installed itunes or any other programs. The only change is that there was an automatic update of the BIOS (or least that was the message said) from Lenovo and after that I noticed that the screen when I first switch on had changed as the word lenovo had a red coloured surround. Would this have caused the problem casuing the computer to not see DVD/CD rom drive within Device manager?

The only only thing thing I have done is enable access to the microsoft games which are hidden in the Pro version.

Sicard

Have you got any restore points before the bios update? Maybe worth a try. If not what does it say in disc management?

littlemoney

Sicard wrote: »

Have you got any restore points before the bios update? Maybe worth a try. If not what does it say in disc management?

What is Disc Managment and where do I find it please.

I thought that restore only undid Window changes not BIOS changes.

mandySaver12

Another thing to maybe do is check for any driver updates on the lenovo website?

Le_Kirk

littlemoney wrote: »

What is Disc Managment and where do I find it please.

Open Windows (File) Explorer, right click on Computer and select Manage. When that opens in a new window, select Disk Management under storage in the left hand side bar.

forgotmyname

Its a windows update that killed it. Google it. There is a small registry fix that will cure it.

Had several calls about it.

Strider590

The other common culprit is DRM software, buyers of genuine non-pirated CDs/Music/DVD can sometimes find their CD drives have been disabled to stop you copying protected media. They think it's ok to actually break your PC......

Many years ago a well known "recorded music company" did this by putting errors on the disc so that it would get locked in a constant spin up/down (only on PCs) and wouldn't allow the drive to be opened, these days it's done with software.
It is however quite rare now, as many realised that punishing people for buying a genuine product was only going to serve to drive them toward pirated content.
If you have CDs that are 10-15+ years old, you may well have something nasty waiting on them.