CD Rom drive not recognized, yet it is?

Troubleshoot the hardware

You mentioned that the drive isn't "seen" in the Bios -- did you enter Bios Setup and take a look there? (or did you just watch the Bios info screen as it flashes by at startup?)

Why not take a look in the Bios Setup screens. For your model, I believe you press the F2 key to enter the Bios (of course, you do this when first powering on). Take a look at the settings for the IDE controllers - they should be set to "Enabled", and to "Auto" to automatically detect the presence of any optical or hard drives. Your model Gateway usually ships with parallel-IDE drives, so I don't believe you have a SATA optical drive.

If everything looks OK in there, try booting with a bootable CD/DVD. A Knoppix disk would be handy for this -- since it will run entirely from system memory & not write anything to your hard drive (which it mounts as "read only"). You can grab a Knoppix disk from their website --- http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html --- if the computer finds and boots Knoppix OK, you know there's nothing wrong with your optical drive.

If the drive tests OK - you'll know your problem lies in the software department.

If no optical drive shows up in the Bios, no matter that your Bios settings look right, something is wrong with your cabling, jumpers, or with the motherboard. It's fairly easy to check your jumpers & cabling. I believe your model has a SATA hard drive, and an PATA DVD drive. If the jumper on the DVD drive says "CS" (or "Cable Select") - ensure that it's connected to the end connector. Assuming you have no other drives sharing the cable with the DVD drive, the jumper may also be set to "M" (or "Master").

If the optical drive still refuses to work (at all) - and still refuses to be recognized as present by the Bios -- if the system is under warranty (I"ll assume it is, since that's a fairly recent model), call Gateway & have them repair it - on their dollar. If you are out-of-warranty, try a spare drive (ask around, a friend might have an extra).
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Troubleshoot the software

Well, you can at least be comforted by the fact that many people have experienced this problem. Not quite so comforting is the wide variety of "fixes" and disagreements as to the causes.

[If the DVD drive was originally detected in Vista, one quick-fix that you can try right away is to use Vista's built-in "System Restore" feature, using a restore point from before the CD/DVD drive disappeared --- in your case, probably the first restore point created]

A common problem, often, is that some programs (notably those with CD/DVD recording abilities) make changes to settings for your CD/DVD drives. My general recommendation is to try to find which program is responsible, and see if an update (or "patch") is available from the support website for that program.

As the actors in the old movies used to say, let's "round up the usual suspects" = Nero, Roxio, iTunes, LimeWire, AnyDVD, (some even say Norton 360?), etc. ... Should you have recently installed any of these just before your CD/DVD drive disappeared - they could have contributed to the problem.

Look for clues in the Event Viewer logs (these are in the Administrative Tools in the Vista Control Panel). Especially look in on the errors --- warnings and informational notices don't need quite as much attention. Look for updates from any programs mentioned.

Also - make sure you have your Windows Updates arriving automatically, & that you are up-to-date. You can check in the Control Panel's "Security Center". It may be that simply updating Vista with the latest patches will help.

If you aren't sure what program might have caused the trouble, you can try a Registry edit to help troubleshoot. Using the edit can help make the CD/DVD drive reappear, but it can cause the program that made the original change to the CD/DVD settings not work. This can actually prove which program was at fault = it's the one that no longer works afterwards.

UpperFilters & LowerFilters Registry Edit:

1) Type RegEdit into the Search box on your Vista Start Menu
2) Click on the regedit.exe icon that appears on the menu
3) Navigate (by clicking on the little arrows to expand lists) to the following Registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4) Clicking on that key will show various items and values in the right-hand pane. If you see a Name entry that says "UpperFilters", right-click it and select "Delete"
5) Do the same for any Name entry that says "LowerFilters".
6) Close regedit.
7) Reboot to let the changes take effect.

Note - if you do not see the "Filters" items, just exit the Registry Editor without making any changes.

I'l be curious to hear which repair helps to fix your DVD troubles - since there are so many variations.

If the above steps dosen’t work try this:

If the IDE controllers are showing a problem then the system will not detect devices on it properly.
First Update the IDE drivers from the motherboard manufac... web site. (chipset INF)
Second I would check to make sure the system did not add the good old NOIDE in the registry.
Start --> run
regedit
In the left pane make sure My Computer is selected.
Click edit ---> find
Type in NOIDE
click find
If a entry show up delete it, and reboot the system.

Best of luck! :huh:

Robin's

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