BleepingComputer.com: DVD-Drive not showing in My Computer, FIX!!

WARNING THIS METHOD REQUIRES ENTRY INTO THE REGISTRY OF THE SYSTEM

if the DVD-Drive isnt showing in my computer and has an error in the device manager

Click on Start Menu
Click on Run and type Regedit.exe
navigate to the following key:

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

after selecting the final section of the above key you should see two settings on the right hand side
"Upperfilters"
"Lowerfilters"
Click on each of them, press DELETE and click YES

RESTART the system after doing so

upon reboot the system should now see the DVD-Drive in my computer

This would work if the problem is indeed a registry issue, (corrupt registry from a virus removal etc) though, one should be careful to confirm that this is indeed the case before editing the registry-a faulty optical drive could cause the exact same symptoms as well as a corrupt driver.

The upper/lower filters thing is an old, useful trick that works often.

But I understand that MS FixIt has now incorporated that into the routines that it runs, which is an easy way of dealing with optical drive recognition problems, IMO.

MS Fixit, Optical Drives - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116

Louis

Extremely dangerous proposition of editing windows registry files even for the seasoned professional.