Disappearing DVD drives?

[Muhayaddin]

Hello all! If someone has experienced this before and knows what could be causing it, that would be great. I sometimes use DVD Shrink to burn some disks and I have a DVD drive and a separate DVD burner drive. Every once in awhile, when I go to find one or the other in MyComputer, one turns up missing. I have no idea why this is. I've tried re-installing the drivers to no avail. When I reboot the system, it always comes back, but that's a pain to do all the time. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Muha

[Muhayaddin]

Forgot to add that I'm using Windows XP Pro.

[Polaris573]

I had a virus that did that. It was about 7 years ago though.

Your power supply could be going bad? Your power and/or IDE cables could be loose too.

[strick94u]

Do you have service pack 2? if not it will do that not sure why but it fixed the same problem on both my laptops and my desktop

[Muhayaddin]

Cables are all good. I am running service pack 2. Perhaps the power supply is going bad. I only seem to have the problem after using DVD Shrink or similar burning/unencription software. Thanks for the feedback. I will test the power supply next.

Toodaloo.:rockout:

[Alec§taar]

Cables are all good. I am running service pack 2. Perhaps the power supply is going bad. I only seem to have the problem after using DVD Shrink or similar burning/unencription software. Thanks for the feedback. I will test the power supply next.

Toodaloo.:rockout:

FIRST THING TO LOOK @:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

& other spots like:

HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\ IDE

These are SOME of the areas where your drive letters (DosDevices) & such, like HDD's & Cd/DvD are controlled from... you MAY want to look @ that set of entries, if only for the GUID identifiers that will be your clue to 'tracking this down' thru the registry manually...

The actual drive letters, from the 1st registry path, SHOULD be in a lower part of the right-hand side pane (DosDevices)...

NOW, above that, a series of "GUIDS" (globally unique identifiers, long strings of numbers & letters) should have 1 (possibly more, pay CLOSE ATTENTION to their strings, because some may be VERY close to others) entries MATCHING your Cd-Rom/DvD-Rom etc. above it.

Make sure they match & if not, this IS your problem QUITE possibly:

Some program you are using appears to be 'wiping this out' or setting/matching them properly.

SECOND THING TO LOOK @:

EASIEST POSSIBLE METHOD I HAVE SEEN WORK IN CASES SORT OF LIKE THIS ONE?

USE devmgmt.msc & have it "rescan" for new hardware too...

That MIGHT pick up on the disks again, with a LOT less work, than the above manual method of inspecting mounted diskdrives DosDevices & the registry spelunking potentially involved using the GUID data outlined above...

However, IF the Cd/DvD devices are there already in device mgr. (devmgmt.msc)? Well, remove/uninstall them if they appear there now!

Then, have device manager (devmgmt.msc) perform a hardware rescan (or rebooting MAY do it, Plug & Play can pickup on things pretty well too)!

APK

P.S.=> Once, & IF, you get this right again? Back that area up via regedit.exe File/Export menus, just to be safe...

NOW, also:

There may be other areas in your registry associated w/ this as well (searching by the GUID can help on this account, so you can export & save all entries once you get them right, IF you do), but these 2 tests/methods, ARE your starting point imo, from a software-side perspective @ least... apk