BleepingComputer.com: My D:/ Drives has Fallen off the Radar!

Hi All

I inserted a disc into my D: drive just now and it didn't recognise that there was a disc in there. The light on the front of the drive flashed but the disc didn't start spinning and so I opened My Computer to click on the icon but there wasn't an icon showing for the disc drive. All I can say is that it was there the other day.

I ran Speccy and it can up saying that there were 'No optical disc drives detected'.

Any help or suggestions would be very much appreciated.

hi, if this is a desktop computer ,remove the main power plug ,open the side case and unplug the cable from the motherboard ,and plug it back in , some for back of the drive ,if nothing, it could be a bad cable or the drive itself is bad

One of these may help:
1. Uninstall the drive through Device Manager.
Restart computer. The drive will be automatically reinstalled.
or...
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116
Restart computer.
or...
3. Download, and run Restore Missing CD Drive patch
Double click on cdgone.zip to unzip it.
Right click on cdgone.reg, click Merge.
Accept registry merge.
Restart computer.
or...
4. Go to Device Manager, click a "+" sign next to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
You'll see two items:
- ATA Channel0 (or Primary Channel)
- ATA Channel1 (or Secondary Channel)
Right click on each of them, and click Uninstall. Confirm.
Restart Windows. They'll be automatically reinstalled.

Hi Guys - many thanks for your replies.

Ok, I've disconnected and reconnected the cable. I've also uninstalled the device through the Device Manager and done the 'cdgone.reg' thing and looked at the Microsoft instructions (see below) and uninstalled ATA Primary Channel and ATA Secondary Channel. Sadly, I still don't have a D: drive.

One of the curious things about this is that I seem to have too many of everything!

For example, take the registy entry that I was supposed to change according to Microsoft. They say to find

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Well I've got 24 folders in my registry called by this name! I've looked at all of them and they all look a bit different but none of them list the UpperFilters registry entry and nor the lower ones either.

In the device manager I've got two entries in the Disc Drives section. One called ST340413A and the other WDCWD400BB-22HEA1. But I've only got one disc drive. I've uninstalled both a several occasions.

Finally, in the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section I've got 2 Primary IDE Channel entries and two Secondary IDE Channel entries. I've also unistalled all of these several times too.

The curious thing is that, when I restart the computer after unistalling the CD Drive entries in Device Manager, the computer says 'Found New Hardware - Disc Drive'. But still no disc drive.

Any further suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

Did you try my solution #3?

Please download SystemLook from one of the links below and save it to your Desktop.
Download Mirror #1
Download Mirror #2
64-bit users go HERE

• Double-click SystemLook.exe to run it.
  
• Vista users:: Right click on SystemLook.exe, click Run As Administrator
  
• Copy the content of the following box into the main textfield:
  

  :reg
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} /s
  

  
  
  
• Click the Look button to start the scan.
  
• When finished, a notepad window will open with the results of the scan. Please post this log in your next reply.

Note: The log can also be found on your Desktop entitled SystemLook.txt

Hi Broni - sorry I didn't make it very clear.

Paul Eamonn, on 14 November 2010 - 02:25 PM, said:

Attached is the .txt file you asked for.

This post has been edited by Paul Eamonn: 15 November 2010 - 03:41 AM

Nothing there.

I suspect, you may need a new drive.

Oh! Ok Broni. Well, many thanks for looking.

You're very welcome