Wow, this is pretty bad. I have a client’s Sony laptop in which she just purchased probably not even a week ago. Right now I’m trying to resolve a missing DVD-Rom drive after inserting a movie or doing anything with the DVD-Rom drive. I put Google to good use and found that there are many others having the same exact problem. This is pitiful as there is no fix in sight. Now that is just wrong, plain wrong, and more wrong and more wrong. I’m rather upset at the fact that Microsoft would let this slip for so long. Also there isn’t much talk about it other than many posts on the Vista newsgroups. I’m wondering why no bigger site has bothered to report on this flaw in Vista.
This is just another reason to chock towards not upgrading to Vista. I’m still running XP and plan to for some time. I’m not bashing Vista, there are its pros over XP but at the same time there seem to be much more cons.
I’m going to go do more research on this and if I figure something out you know I’ll post it here. Otherwise, if you find something out, feel free to share that info with me. Thanks.
UPDATE
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:
- Click on the start menu.
- If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
- Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
- In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
- Restart Windows.
- Let me know if this works.
UPDATE: 10/27/07
In the case that you’ve deleted both the upper and lower filters and also removed the device through device manager and you still are unable to read CDs or DVDs, this may indicate that your drive is bad and or your motherboard is bad.
If your computer is relatively new, I would think that it is a drive problem. If your computer is relatively old, then I would think it may be a bad motherboard.
A good way to check if your drive is still good is to “boot” from it. What I mean by this is to restart your computer, find your boot menu and tell it to boot from CD.
You will need a bootable CD. I often use a Windows installation disk. Or if you have something like Memtest or the Hitachi Drive Fitness test you can use those.
Update 2/4/10
If you are still having problems, try installing this Gear driver update. This apparently plays a role with the way iTunes and Vista sees the optical drive.
Please if this solution helped you take some time to donate a little something. Even if it’s just a dollar. It really helps me to keep the site going. I really appreciate it.
Yeah, me to with the XP. I bought a 17″ HP DV9040 Laptop that had Windows XP Multimedia on it. The computer inexpensive but still came with lots of cool gizmos (including a built-in webcam, the ability to receive tv signal on the computer, cable hook-ups, surround sound, tons of hard drive (240 GB), Plenty of RAM, cd ^ dvd writer with a program that etches whatever you like into the top of the cd/dvd, etc. And I even got it at a great price. ANYWAY, I got it back in Sept or Oct and when it was purchased I was promised a freed upgrade to Vista as soon as Vista ready. I have yet to take them up on their generous offer,because my windows XP Media Center works great still. And it seems as though all of the Vista bugt are still very much being worked out. At some point, microsoft will just quit selling XP so that people will have to buy Vista I think. But I have it for now, and that’s all that matters.
I have windows Vista and had the message that my cd driver was
missing. I did the steps that you indicated and it works perfect. Thank you !!! you are a life saver!!!
Maximize the HKLM path is not found in Windows Vista, is there a fix for pepole already running Vista OS?
Thanks
Drema
Hmm, that’s strange. Would it be possible for you to take a screen shot if the screen when you use regedit?
Windows Vista – Missing CD/DVD-Rom drive … too bad we do not know who provided the information but the regedit solution worked for me.
For the DVD-Rom drive – regedit solution worked for me. If I had listened to my manufacturer support team, I would have to reinstall Windows Vista again! Thanks mate.
cheers worked like a treath
thank you so much,i try what you said and finally i found it my dvd room again
OK, I found the same solution on MS’s owm homepage for the same problem..
I’m folowing the instructions but find no upper or lower filters..
The only matching stringtype for “REG_MULTI_SZ” is named “IconPath” and the data says “%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-30″.
I’ve tried to eksport, delete and import it again (with many reboots along the way) but nothings seems to help..
The DVD-drive just went missing after one reboot after long weeks of perfekt use..
NB. The Drivers apear to be working and the DVD drive is not missing in the list of hardware and their drivers.. (in Danish: Enhedshåndtering)
NB. I’m using VISTA Home Premium (DK), and I’ve got no problems so far accept this..
Kaare,
Try removing the upper and lower filters instead of anything else.
I had the same problem with the disappearing DVD drive using a new Toshiba Satellite laptop running Vista. The posted solution worked beautifully. Thanks…..
Hi,
I had the same problem with my acer 5630 notebook (vista version) when I removed the Upperfilter and the lowerfilter my dvdrom player came back. BUT i lost my touchpad and keyboard instead!
I dont now what to do. I restored my notebook but my dvd rom player went dead again! So you understand I dont want to remove any filter what so ever ’cause a keyboard is really annoying to miss.
Can anyone help me pleeeeaaaassseee!
hi,
thanks, registry solution works fine. just be carefull to delete the key from the right directory, their names are to similar
You sir a genius!
The thing is, I dont have an upperfilter option, only lowerfilter. I tried just deleting that and nothing happened.
Tim,
In that case, more often than not, just deleting whatever filter be it “upper” or “lower” should have an impact. Have you restarted your computer?
Works like a charm! Running Windows Vista Ultimate, often experienced problems with my CD and DVD drives disappearing when inserting disc, plagued me for weeks then I finally got annoyed enough to find a fix, worked great!
Did a restart but the drives dont show up at all, not even in device manager. Im running a Vista upgrade on a HP m7350n.
Thanks so much! This really made my day and people like you really warm my heart for sharing knowledge!
My drives have been missing for about 2 weeks, and I wasnt really prepared to do ANOTHER install of Vista Home Premium – The above Regedit procedure WORKS.
The XP version of this fix doesnt work on Vista, although advised by Microsoft saying it does.
C’mon Microsoft, get these bugs sorted!
Many thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the tip – this has been driving me crazy and it worked perfectly-
Thanks a lot.
now i am very happy that my DVD rw is running. the regedit helped me to solve this problem
I want to kiss your feet!
I was truly done for.
I was trying out vista for the 30 day that Bill gives us.
When I lost my disc drives, wait, 30 days of OS, then because of the OS I can’t put another one on.
This is an awesome fix, surly the f**kers at microsoft should be doing these fixes with the millions of error reports they get on it.
Thank you so much.
test
i have a new laptop with factory installed vista HP DV?? series and up to date spyware and antivirus software. ive recently installed itunes and i dont know but it seems like there are numerous things happening
-task bar will not unlock
-cd/dvd drive not recognised (havent gotten a chance to try fix)
-startup status/performance application not coming up anymore
-recent documents/programs arent on start menu (just blank area, “store a list of recent programs and documents is checked under properties”
-settings on games restore to default after closing
i dont think all of these problems would be because of itunes but who knows. ive done sweeps and they have found nothing havent noticed any performance changes and there are no weird applications in processes.
any input would help, thanks in advance.
fyi i didnt know the vista restore function doesnt automatically create restore to dates so i dont have the aoption to restoring to a previous date were all these things werent happening. thanks again.
I tried the above mentioned fix but it didn’t work. It always comes back after a reboot for me but it’s quite annoying. I only had the “lower filter” so I deleted it. In it’s description to the right of it is had something about Anydvd. Which I did have installed. I uninstalled and followed the procedure but still the drive vanishes. Boo!!!
I have a similar problem,
My DVD drive is detected, I can read DVDs (movies, aplications and also the ones I had written earlier) but for some reason I can’t write any more dvds. Everytime I insert a blank DVD it does not detect it.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
thanks yo, this works great but now i have another problem. explorer stops responding ever second and after i let it restart itself it stops responding again…. hmm i guess i will just clean install vista…. i should have done that in the first place
I had the same problem as Steve and some of the others. I only had a LowerFilter. When deleted the DVD would work for a short period after boot up but then revert back to disappearing. This symptom led me to believe that something during Startup was causing the problem. So, using MsConfig, I disabled all startup items and it worked. CD opens and is available in My Comp. Now to just figure out what exactly is causing the problem during startup.
man i thank you so much for postin this man this helped me alot … i really thought i was done for lol … thanks
i had the same problem with windows vista.. even my virtual drive wasn’t dected…
thnkssssssssssss!!
@Dan
If your computer is freezing up I think it’s more of a software issue than anything to do with the DVD drive. Although it could also be a hardware issue. If a clean install does not fix it then you may be dealing with a hardware problem. Let me know if you need anything else.
worked fine on toshiba satellite running vista home basic
Thank you so much for this solution! I was so upset when this happened to me since it happened to my old computer, and i always had to restore the system, and I just got this new computer and I thought I shouldn’t restore it just for that, and that I just got this computer two weeks ago!! lol
It worked perfectley, thanks again
-Yoko
Wow, have had this new Dell computer for 2 weeks. I already had a hard drive crash, then after hours of tech support and having a guy come out to the house to fix it, I wind up losing My CD/DVD Roms. I tried the above solution and it works like a champ! Saved me hours of dealing with Dell again. Thanks.
Will
I have the same problem with the missing drive i am running ultimate and done the same in regedit and restarted my system but still only have one dvd drive instead of two.
If anybody has any other ideas would be apreciated.
Thanks.
Ian
My problem has been happened before a month until know my DVD Drive disappearing and I checked the drive manager its not listed there but when I refresh the list it appear but after restarting machine the problem return again and I have to do the same thing go to device manager and press again the check devices changes and the DVD drive appear etc…
P.S. : Windiws VISTA Ultimate !!!
I have done the deleting of the upper and lower filters and they are there for a minute and then after rebooting or using the drive they delete again. I am so frustrated and I am trying to get a software reloaded. It loaded the first cd & now the 2nd cd wont register. Please help me.
I work for a Technical Support Team, and this is really awesome! I used to recommend system recovery process all of the time, but when I found this site.. customer keeps an “issue resolve”! thanks!
Hi All.
A big thanx to the administration in this forum.
I have just bought my laptop, and got the problem.
I was about to cry, i have a 3 month vacation coming, without my pc.. but because of your hero action, it’ is up working.
Thx
I wish I could hug whoever came up with this fix! I have been stressing all day over the CD Rom troubles from Vista. Thank you so much! This worked miracles!!
Million thanks!!! I have a new Toshiba laptop and have been trying to fix this for weeks, I tried your fix without much hope but it worked miraculously!
Big kiss!
what do i do if it only shows lowerfilters not the upper
Mike,
If it only has lower filters, delete just the lower filter. That’s all.
Hi everyone,
Okay, I had my brand new labtop for 2 months now. My laptop is Acer Aspire Series 5100-3357.
I strongly believe that it’s iTune that caused this situation for me. It was when the battery ran low and then the machine has to restart all over again. I had to take iTunes out and i did everything from a system restore (which allows you go back and reverse the process).
I haven’t done anything yet because I was worried that I might ruin something. Now I looked at my laptop and I saw the Upper Filters for my machine.
What should I do????
Thanks Admin…
Cassandra
I have Vista (new PC) and my DVD/CD drive has always been sporadic. Even though the device manafer and the drivers appear to be working fine, it will not see ANY type of disc that I put in there. Any ideas? I have a feeling it may be a hardware problem?
Stu,
Have you tried doing this registry fix that I posted here? If not, try it. It may help. If you continue to have problems and it’s a relatively new computer, I suggest taking it in for warranty service.
Cassandra,
I suggest removing the upper filter and restarting your computer to check and see if it helped. Any program that takes control of your CD-Rom drive such as Nero, iTunes, Roxio, etc., can all have an impact on this missing drive problem. It surely doesn’t hurt to remove this particular registry key as long as you’re only removing the upper and lower filters (or either or depending on which one you have there in the registry).
Thanks Admin… This registry worked. I able to watch a dvd and hear music from a cd…
Thanks Admin your freakin’ awesome… i’m keeping this website in my favorites..
Another satisfied customer!
The registry deletion corrected the problem perfectly! I’ll be sure to spread the word.
Thanks so much, whoever posted!
We purchased two Acer Aspire 5100 series laptops that came with VISTA in March and installed the Epison Printers that came with this purchase. We then lost the CD-DVD rom drivers. After numerous calls to ACER (not to mention frustration!), we located your site and the above mention “fix” works!!! you are wonderful. THANK YOU
I followed your instructions but I can’t find the upper and lower filter in the right panel
I am running on windows ultimate
AWESOME! Thank you SO much. It works like a charm. Now I have to figure out how to fix my sound issue. My web will no longer play sound and the sound card appreas to be working fine?! Vista, love it.
thanks admin it worked
Hi
I did the regedit fix as told, double-checked and triple-checked, its correct but it still didn’t work. I still have this big red ‘no entry’ cross over my CD-Drive and I can’t access it.
Help!!
Wow, awsome, i would have thrown my laptop out the window if this didn’t work!
I am running Vista Home Premium, I tried the registry fix, but there is no upper or lower filters under the specified key……I am at a loss to fix my CD/DVD Drive. I have noticed people who downloaded Limewire have had problems – I downloaded Limewire Pro. I have uninstalled Limewire, and still have had no luck.
Any Suggestions?????
My vista premium had an upper filter, but no lower. I deleted it and it worked like a charm. You are a lifesaver.
Thanks for the fix. I can’t believe it worked. I’ve got Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. To find the filters, I followed his instructions, than used Find as there are so many things to scroll through otherwise.
I had this problem and made the changes to registry… worked fine. Now there also is the problem of ALL hired dvd movies freeze in media center after a couple of minutes. The light on the drive continues to flash?? ACER 5630 & Vista Ultimate. Not sure where to find fix for this?
Thanks man you are the best.Your solution worked perfect.But i think the new ‘’super” windows should not have this bug
Well, I deleted the registry filters (long ago) and I was able to get the driver running but the only thing that my driver reads is CD’s and no DVD what so ever….any solution for this….i’ve been going nuts for months and can get it running….
I had the same problem (in Vista Ultimate) and I was able to fix it by opening the Device Manager and clicking Action | Scan for hardware changes, and voila! my DVD drive was back…
the driver is there, but the driver is only able to read CD’s and no DVD’s….this means the driver si in teh device manager and functions but as a cd-rw driver and not a dvd/cd-rw driver….
t4g63,
It could be that your drive is defective. A lot of the time optical drives are able to read one format such as CD but not the other and vice versa. If you have a bootable DVD such as a Vista install disk you can try and boot from it and if it does then you can assume the drive is okay and that it’s a software issue. If it does not boot then you can safely assume that the drive is unable to read DVDs.
I have a Dell Dimension E520 that runs Vista Premium. I had the CD/DVD disappear. I went to Dell and downloaded their patch: Nothing, Nada.. Then I tried your fix with the regedit trick. First time it didn’t delete. Then I discovered that I had to be signed in as an Administrator. Once I did that, I had the filters,both upper and lower, and I could delete them. I first made a copy of the registery just in case something went terribly wrong.Then proceeded with your recomended fix. IT WORKED Now I have my drive back and I am a happy camper. THANK YOU ALL who contributed to this forum.
I deleted upperfilter but now i tunes is messed up. how do i get it back?
Same thing happened to me on a Toshiba Sattelite. I haven’t changed the registry yet – but I did try uninstalling itunes. The cd rom drive works again. So maybe it’s a conflict between vista and itunes. A conflict between apple and microsoft, you say? What a surprise. Wouldn’t put it past either of them to do something like this intentionally.
actually when you install itunes on vista it triggers the problem; what you can do is try the registry “fix” and delete the upper filters and the cd driver will work, but you will be unable to burn disks on itunes.
Ryan,
actually i tried booting using a dvd and nada….the thing does not read DVD’s (also tried using a vista driver upgrade DVD and same thing) I have assumed that the damm driver is not working properly and I will take my cpu to the retailer so they can give me a new one
I have the same problem with windows vista ultimate.Operation system was installed from boot DVD,but after install Windows Vista Ultimate can’t see CD-DVD Drive.Windows can’t find in My Computer,also not see in Device Manager.The Bios see CD DVD ROM,Windows Vista can’t find nowhere!Please help me if you can!!!
I have a Toshiba and my CD/DVD drive didnt show
I only had the lowerfilters reg key, After i deleted it and restarted my CD/DVD drive now shows
Thx to the poster
What is lower and upper filters?I deleted all keys-{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} in the right panel and restart my computer but CD missing…I can’t understand what’s the problem.My OS is windows vista ultimate.help me.
I only had the lower filters option in Windows Ultimate. I deleted that one and it works perfect. Thanks for that.
Pesho,
You should only delete an entry within that key. Be very careful as deleting the entire key can cause your computer to become unstable.
If you only have the lower or upper filter it does not matter, as long as you remove it it should bring your CD/DVD-ROM drive back.
ummm this totally works! thank you thank you thank you!
Ryan,thanks for help but in my Vista Ultimate I can’t see upper and lower filter.In folder “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
” there is 2 subfolders-0000 and Properties.Nobody in the forums talks for this subfolders.In the right panel I see registry keys-Type Reg_SZ and Reg_Binary.Please help me!I’m not blind man in my Vista Ultimate lower and upper filters does not exist!!!PLease help me!
Did the step above and worked for me. Appreciated, many thanks.
I can’t see upper and lower filter.In folder “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
” there is 2 subfolders-0000 and Properties.Nobody in the forums talks for this subfolders.In the right panel I see registry keys-Type Reg_SZ,Reg_Multi_SZ and Reg_Binary.Please help me!I’m not blind man in my Vista Ultimate lower and upper filters does not exist!!!Names of the keys are: Default,Class,ClassDesc,EnumPropPages,IconPath,Installer32,NoInstallClas,SilentInstall.In supfolder “0000″: Default,DriverDate,DriverDateData,DriverDesc,DriverVersion,InfPath,InfSection,MatchingDeviceId,ProviderName.
Am I onlyone in this forum with impossible problem? PLEASE HELP!I know I must delete registry but which registry??? “Lower and Upper filters” does not exist in my registry!!!Please Help me!!!
lost both my cd drives used ur reg fix perfect again
ur a hero, now the question is why? in the first place
thnx again
This comment was posted yesterday.
“Ryan,thanks for help but in my Vista Ultimate I can’t see upper and
lower filter.In folder
“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlClass{4D36E965-E325-11ÂCE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
” there is 2 subfolders-0000 and Properties.”
Have you checked all the obvious stuff like the cables inside the computer and the drive itself? Maybe your problem is something simple. Sometimes we overlook the obvious.
I wouldn’t mess around in the registery if you can’t find the filters. If you delete the wrong thing you can really screw up the computer. I would check for other sources for the problem.
THANKYOU FOR THE FIX!!! Two days and nights getting stressed and uninstalling anything remotely DVD-ish, and it comes down to deleting 3 characters lol. Works fine now.
I got a new Acer laptop with Vista and the DVDs were working just fine. I installed some updates on windows b/c it asked for them and since then it hasn’t been working. I tried deleting both upper and lowerfilters but no luck. Any ideas?
This worked for me also – Many Thanks
It worked for me! The upper lace was not in there but the lower was. A reset and it was back! Thank you!
Worked perfectly, thanks so much. Any idea what can cause this?
LAF,
I suggest that since the update started your problem go back to the factory default settings and also delete the update. Restart the computer and see if that fixes the problem.
Go to Acer website and see if there is a mention of this problem with MirroSoft listed there. Back up everythihg before you go back to the factory defaults. That way if you have to restore it you will have a copy of all your valueavle stuff.
worked fine after a reboot
my computer did show 3 dvd drives (only have 2 installed) at first but after a few min it displayed the proper amount of dvd drive’s
vista Ultimate 32-bit
this worked for me too. Thanks. I only had one of the filters to delete.
Hello there! I deleted the Upper and Lower Filter like it says up at the top using ‘regedit’ method however I’m regretting it because my Itunes on which I have all my music is now telling me upon starting it up that “The registry settings used by Itunes for importing and burning DVD’s and CD’s is missing and that I need to reinstall Itunes.” Has anyone had this same issue or has an idea on how to fix this so this goes away? If so help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Hi i did what you said at the top but when i look in that location the uperrfilter and lowerfilter were not in that location. I used find and found them somewhere else but i don’t know if i should delete them or not please administrator help me. should i delete them or not?
ok my brother has the exact same notebook as me and everthing. His cd/dvd drive is fine and mine is not. he has teh upperfilter and lowerfilter in a different spot just like i do i don’t understand why is my cd/dvd drive missing and his is not?
Nice. The Reg key deletion worked like a charm. Thanks for the help!
Hello! I tried to do what it said up top and I do not see the lower or top filters…. All I see is on the left side a list of components. Please help me! I am so lost.
Hi, I just used the regedit solution on my Vista x64 and it saved my day. WOW – I am so happy.
I was thinking of reinstalling the OS. Thanks to this board I don’t have to.
Thank you!
Maybe somebody here might have an idea for me. I’ve experienced this problem once before and the reg fix worked for me.
Recently, I lost my drives again but this time, there’s not reg entry for me to delete because I’ve already done it once. I tried uninstalling iTunes because I don’t really use it anyways and rebooted several times. No luck.
In the device manager, I can see the drives but there is an error state on them saying “This device cannot start. (Code 10)”. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers and the device with no luck as well.
Found it very useful and it worked
Bull crap it made my windows vista crash so im just going back to xp vista is horrible!
Chris,
Sorry. You may have deleted the wrong registry key. Please guys, be careful when messing with the registry. Deleting the wrong key can and will leave your computer crippled.
Reije,
I think that may be an actual issue with the drive itself or a deeper issue. Try uninstalling any type of burning program you may have installed recently and re-installing it. That may have caused this to occur. Or even something that utilizes your burner (program).
Just wanted to say thanks for the info. I started with an IDE cd/dvd and this issue came up. Then I figured the drive was dead so I used that as an excuse to buy a sata cd/dvd and same thing happende (error code 39). Then I hit up google and found this thread, did the regedit and it is working fine now. Thanks again
Hi, I cannot get the fix to work for the same reason as Pesho (he posted above). I can’t find anything that says upper or lower limit in the folder. Please help! Maybe it’s because I’m using a desktop?
Thanks
Jon,
If you don’t have it then you can try uninstalling iTunes. I’m not sure what else it could be. Normally it has to do with this particular registry key. Make sure you updated to the newest available iTunes which was released a few days ago. Also make sure you’ve done ALL your Microsoft Updates through the Update program on your computer.
I was able to get the disc to work. I restarted my comp, and then i could see the drive. Before it disappeared, I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it. This seemed to work for me because I was then able to read the disc that would previously cause my drive to disappear. Don’t know if its’ a long term fix though, I’ll post if I find anything else
I was experiencing the same problem. DVD’s not recognised. I was really scared to start deleting things, not being computer minded.
IT WORKED – thanks a million
Help! I too have this problem and would like to avoid a system restore. Here is my problem: I have an HP laptop with a clean install of Windows Vista Premium. I had itunes installed for a while but hadn’t tried to use the dvd player until this weekend – when i noticed it didn’t work and would not appear in my computer and there is even no cd/dvd player item in the device manager list. I called HP and they told me to remove the upper and lower filters as instructed above but it still didn’t work. Then i came upon this website and realized the issue may be itunes. So i uninstalled itunes and restarted the computer. It still didn’t work, but when i went back to the registry, the upper filter icon came back. So i deleted the upper registry and restarted the computer again. Still the same problem. I don’t want to do a system restore but it looks like i may have to. Any other suggestions? Thanks!
THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU THANKYOU, CAN’T BELIEVE IT WORKED SO EASILY AFTER DAYS TRYING TO GET THE DRIVER TO WORK LOVE YOU WHO EVER YOU ARE
To anyone who hasn’t yet found the answer.
I have………..google “cdgone” It works
good luck
Yes it works. thanks for the fix.
My young daughter asked me, “dad, why are you crying?”. As my DVD drive whirred to life, I replied….”because someone out there….cares.”
Okay, that didn’t really happen, but thanks for the fix….much appreciated
After months of stressing about my CD rom drives, at last I have fixed it with your wonderful tip. Who needs technical support when there are such wonderful people willing to share their knowledge.
THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Whoever you are.
Not a problem guys. That’s why I created Random Fix. I knew people out there would be searching for the same exact fix and even if I just helped one person, helping someone makes my day.
I still can’t figure out how to fix my problem. I did the registry fix the first time this happened and it fixed it but the same problem came back and there are no registry items for me to delete this time around as I’ve already done the fix. Any ideas?
Do you have iTunes installed? Is it the latest version? If not, download and install the latest version of iTunes by going to http://www.itunes.com. If you’ve already installed the latest version, un-install it and try re-installing it.
That worked. So anybody that runs into the same problem as me and you need to Re-fix the problem. Uninstall EVERYTHING that has to do with Apple and iTunes and completely delete the folders, reboot, reinstall iTunes, reboot, and the registry key will magically appear again so you can delete it, then reboot and then you’ll have your drives back.
2 days ago my dvd drive vanished i used the microsoft autofix tht deletes the upperfilter and lowerfilter then restarted my pc but my drive still didnt display on “my computer” i am usin xp home not vista any help would b gr8
Mmm weird. I tried it and my cd drives still aren’t showing up.
(Working on XP)
Meg,
Did you restart the computer? Also like someone mentioned a few posts up try and uninstalling iTunes and re-installing it. That may have played a part in this as well.
Also this was mainly moreso for Windows Vista. I haven’t really heard of it happening with XP as much as with Vista.
When was the last time you saw the CD drives in My Computer with XP? There’s the possibility that your drive(s) may be bad/broken.
This has happened to me a couple of times, and this fix solves it for a while. I also noticed this seems to be related to Shutdown hanging. Shutdown hangs, I cold boot, and when it comes up the drives are missing. Apply this fix, restart and all is well.
Amazing (not really I suppose) that Microsoft does nothing about this. But then, I guess they don’t care, they don’t have to. Sorta like the phone company of days gone by?
I have the Toshiba A135-S4427 runnung Vista Home Premium I can’t get my cd to work. I did the regedit and deleted the lower filter ( there was no upper)restarted 2 times still doesn’t play the cd. Tech support said to reinstall to factory, but I don’t want to lose 6 months of data…..any ideas???
I am running Vista ultimate 32 and have a NEC3520 DVD burner. Burning DVD’s and CD’s has never been a problem, as the matter of fact I’m burning a DVD while typing. However when I insert a written DVD/CD the system freezes for about 2 seconds whereafter the drive is gone. Uninstalling and reinstalling the device absolutely helps, it reappears in explorer and is usable for burning again. However inserting a written medium vanishes the drive again. In short: I can burn, but I can’t view.
No upper filters present, deleted lower filters.
Somehow I think it has something to do with the autoplay function, although reconfiguring and disabling does not help.
Any ideas concerning the autoplay function?
(Running Vista Home Premium) I tried this fix but to no avail, after reboot it still doesn’t recognise it. I mainly get this problem when I install a blank disc. I have recently installed DVD Decrypter but I have now uninstalled it (after I did a system restore).
Is there anything else that could possibly be? Only seems to happen to me with blank DVD’s.
RedMike,
Do you have iTunes installed? Try uninstalling iTunes and re-installing it and then removing the registry entries. That is what someone else did and was successful with this. I haven’t seen this particular problem with the blank DVD but I have seen it where once you burn a DVD and you attempt to read it, nothing happens.
So when you insert a blank DVD the drive will disappear?
It seems to be fairly random. Earlier I created a data DVD using Roxio and it was fine, but right after the drive disappeared, unresponsive, couldn’t even eject to get the DVD out until I restarted my laptop.
I don’t have iTunes installed. Could it be some clash with different programs using drive, or some kind of DRM voodoo? Thanks!
Hmm, do you have the actual Roxio CD? I would try uninstalling Roxio. Roxio is notorious for doing bad things to Windows in regards to the CD/DVD-ROM drives. Be it making them disappear completely (which in the case I actually experienced this recently) and making them non-functional. I would say try uninstalling Roxio if you can. Go with an alternative software like Nero. Nero you have to pay for but it’s well worth it.
Cool, thanks.
I’ve actually found a pretty ridiculous temporary fix. I did a further Google to the subject and found on a tech blog that if you put the OS to sleep, then wake again, the missing drive magically reappears. Mad! An otherwise brilliant OS, but have to love the quick n’dirty hack of this fix!
Same problem here on a Vista Business Edition HP Pavilion dv6000. After removing the lowerfilters (no upperfilters) I can now see the properties info of a CD-R, nothing on a DVD (no access) and can listen to audio CD’s. I get the chance to write to a blank CD-R but there is always a problem at the end. I also tried an external CD drive and external DVD drive and all have the same problems.
This one is really frustrating. There must be someting else running that is hosing the normal CD drive access via the driver.
We have a New Toshiba Laptop. Worked for us. Thanks!!!
Hi all, i am very very frustrated!!! About two weeks ago i bought a new Compaq Windows Vista CPU Tower and even though it claims it has the Roxio software already installed, and i did not receive any software to install it with the machine, each time i try to use it, it will not allow me to burn any Cd music, nor does Windows Media player, it says Drive not Detected on both places
Anyone have any ideas or help please!!!
Ionize, I’m having the same problem with my NEC ND2510A drive in Vista Ultimate 64. NEC support are useless and find it hard work replying to an email. My drive only seems to disappear when I insert a certain media type – TDK DVD-Rs. It’s fine when they’re blank and it’s fine to load other written media, but not these. The disks were burnt on the same drive under Windows 2000. I’m thinking my best bet is to install Windows 2000 on a dual-boot, get the files off the disks and store them somewhere else.
Bloody pain, this is.
The fact is much more than half of Vista’s annoyances are not actually microsoft related. Like this optical device malfunctioning, any multimedia application could turn out to be the culprit; so far I’ve seen Realplayer, Dvix, Sonic solutions, random dvd burning apps… (Yep, an incompatible tiny Codec pack can make your DVD disappear!)
I had the same problem, but didn’t find any upperfilter or lowerfilter in regedit. However, I did deactivate a few services from msconfig->start. Vista Side Bar, Welcome Screen and Daemon Tools. Daemon Tools is more likely to be the sinner than the two others, however I have not activated the two MS services yet, so any one of them could be the cause of the problem.
Okay, I officially love you.
Thank you so much.
My DVD drive missing problem started sometime after restored my Sony laptop to original… I went to install MS Office and no DVD Drive! Anyways, I tried to avoid the regedit fix by researching drivers and KB articles… no luck. I gave in, backed up my registry and followed the instructions. I wish I did this in the beginning and save a whole bunch of time… Thanks!
I have the similar problem as Red Mike.
I also created a data CD using Roxio and it was fine. I tried to burn another CD and it keep asking for an empty disk, regardless of whether if it was empty or not.
I have uninstall literally everything and I have tried the regedit steps with no success. I’ve unistall and reinstalled the driver too. Everytime I stick in any CD (empty or not) it thinks it is a blank disk and it ask me what I want to do with it. I’m able to burn stuff using windows, but the DVD drive no longer reads anything. Any ideas on this one?
Chiman, that is exactly what is happening on my laptop, the only thing to add is for some unknown reason I can play original audio cd’s still. Infuriatiing not being able to install software etc. I am still waiting in hope someone comes across a solution for this. Maybe Microsoft?
Well I have the same problem (iTunes/missing CD/DVD Drives) as above with the CD/DVD drives not being able to start (Vista Home Premium). I deleted the upper filters (no lower filters were shown) in registry and now CD/DVD is back, however iTunes won’t start – gives error that the “..registry settings used by the iTunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing CD Burning Software. Please reinstall iTunes.”
This whole d@#$ circus seems like a catch22 situation where Vista and iTunes are incompatible (in some cases). I suppose that re-installing iTunes will break the CD/DVD drives again… Arrrrgggh!
Anyone who has cracked this Rubik’s cube, please speak up..
P.
Paul,
It seems that if you deleted the filter then it stays deleted. So reinstall i-tunes and do a full shutdown of the computer for 2 minutes i-tunes then reloads. Then go get the newest drivers.To be sure I would restart the computer after I loaded the drivers also. Then open i-Tunes. Hopefully that resolves the problem.
It seems to be the usual thing in that Mircosoft wants to control your choise to burn CDs and he hates anything Apple. He would rather that you use a Microsoft product and control all that you do. Good luck
Mark,
Thanks for the comments – I will try this – when you say “get the newest drivers” do you mean search for new CD/DVD drivers? I had done that before and it always reported that there were “no better drivers” available than those installed.
Ont thing that I failed to note before was that despite the itunes message (in my post above, itunes DID start, though I haven’t tried to use it to burn any CDs yet…
Thanks Again.
Thank you very much for posting this invaluable fix, Ryan.
I was panicking up a storm when my brand new acer’s dvd drive vamoosed. I’d only got it out of the box this morning!
-ToneF-
Aloha and thank you guys for your comments and help.
I just want to say that working on computers for the past several years, I’ve noticed a common problem amongst laptop optical drives. I’ve noticed that they go bad, frequently. I notice that the symptoms that often display are unable to read certain disks be it DVD±R, or basic CDR disks.
If your drive is there in My Computer and it can read certain disks but not others, there is a high probability that the drive itself may be bad.
However, the basic and easiest troubleshooting is to remove the drive from device manager and another great, but yet easy troubleshooting procedure is to actually BOOT off of the drive.
If you have a bootable DVD (more than likely a copy of Windows Vista), or even a bootable CD (however in this case if your optical drive already reads CDs fine this would not help necessarily), you can find out whether or not the drive is bad or if it’s a software/Windows problem.
Paul,
There was a recent update for iTunes. Have you installed that? Was there any change/difference?
Ryan,
I am running the latest iTunes release (7.3.2.6). After running for a couple days, iTunes will now not start (again). The DVD/CD drives are however still visible. Re-installing the standalone version of QuickTime and rebooting allows iTunes to start but in a mode like it is a “fresh” install (asking to search for files, etc). CD/DVD drives still available, but iTunes can’t burn disks – says drivers are missing and asks to re-install iTunes. (deja vu all over again)
What a mess. I find it hard to believe that as big a problem as this apparently is for so many people, based on Google searches, not one single comment from Apple or Microsoft that addresses it.
Arrrrgggggghhhh!!
A million thank you’s. My DVD drive has gone missing three times now. It made me crazy and it went back to Toshiba twice and a local repair once. The second time I uninstalled iTunes and that worked too after I restored the whole computer. (to out of the box state), but that’s a pain in the butt!!!
This worked like a charm on my Vista Satellite.
I can’t thank you enough!!!!
Hi, same problem, but when I deleted the upper filter (there was no lower filter) and restarted, I still couldn’t see/use my nc-3500A dvd-drive. It’s not even in the device manager, but I can see it when I go into BIOS.
Scrolling through all these comments I see that other people still have the same problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Excellent Job. Worked like a charm
Hi there i have a similar issue, I have Vista 64Bit installed and I can see all of my drives, however, i can only read maybe one in 200 disks, it doesnt seem to like any kind of disc except original cd’s
it is a tempremental issue that sometimes reolves itself.
basically i insert a disc, it spins up and the light stays on…thats it nothing else, and any active windows hang until i eject the disc then every thing is fine.
I could not find the filters for the regfix as they werent listed in the keys.
My dvd drive is an NEC DVD RW DL – 3520 AW.
Im wondering if this is a general NEC compatability issue as when i reinstall and dual boot the drive works perfectly under XP and is visible in the bios, but in vista it just does weird things?
Ihave brand new cables as well as firmware for the drive as i thought these may be the culprits but still no joy.
Anyone got any ideas?
umm i have just received a computer preloaded with windows vista home premium and i never noticed until about a week later that the dvd drive doesn’t see the CD,on device manager it doesn’t disappear or anything like that and the drivers are fine, and it still doesn’t see the CDs. I even did the reg edit solution that has been said to work here repeatedly and like some people i only had the lower filters not the upper, and i deleted them and restarted my computer and still nothing! My Drive is TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-H652M ATA Device and please i need someones help! thnx.
Aman, same exact situation with you, I have a TS-L632M ATA internal drive, but also verified with two external drivea that reproduce the same symptoms. Hopefully someone will come across a real fix.
Tried the regestry fix on Vista home premium machine with same missing-DVD problem. HP Pavilion DV6375 with DVD±RW/CD±RW DL Lightscribe drive.
There was no upper filter entry inthe regestry, only lower filter. Deleted as suggested. Solution worked perfectly.
Thanks a million!
Beautiful fix man, I was super-ticked and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. You’re the tits man.
Sanctacaine – have you had any response from NEC? Not sure if you saw above your comment, but I’m experiencing the same problem on Vista x64 with my NEC ND2510A.
Re Previous post Mark.NEC RESPONSE.
Hi Mark, unfortunately NRC have failed to respond with regards to this. Two of my other friends have similar Models and are also having the same issues. So think it might be a compatability issue.
I have just completed a clean install of Vista Ultimate 64 and have not installed any DVD/CD Burning software or anything other than Vista and my Antivirus and I was STILL having the same problems, device was present in control panel but hardly any discs or media were responding. I dont know why it worked but a friend told me to do the following:
1] Turn off Computer
2] Replace Jumper Setting on back of DVD from/to Master/Slave
3] Turn On Computer
4]Turn off computer and Restore Jumper to original setting.
5] Turn on computer
6] Install all of my CD/DVD Burn Software
7] Go to device manager and select Uninstall for the DVD/CD with problems
8] Restart Your computer
SUCCESS I have had no problems over last 24hrs and shall keep everyone updated as to whether this is a fluke or whether it has solved my issues longterm.
Hi,
I installed Windows Vista yesterday and i didn’t see a dvd drive from the beginning(i hadn’t installed anything), i looked for the upper en lowerfilter keys but they weren’t present, so i installed itunes, rebooted, searched for the key, removed the key(unly upperfilter was there now), rebooted, but nothing happend, i still don’t see my dvd drive.
Please help me.
Sam
hey my dad got me and laptop and its a compaq and when i got it. and tryed to install a cd in it nothing happen, like nothing would come up, no message or anything so can please help me with my laptop.
jaimie
Sanctacaine – thanks for the instructions, but, unfortunately, they haven’t worked for me. I don’t have problems with any disks other than these TDK ones, which were written on the very same drive under Windows 2000.
I received a solitary response from NEC, but they haven’t responded to anything beyond that. Drives are so cheap, I’m tempted to just buy another one. I shouldn’t have to, but it may just be the easiest option.
Mark ] have you tried flashing a new firmware into your dvd/cd drive? details and firmware are available from the NEC website.
If you do decide to get a new model i would recommend Samsungs’ range as they are very stable and seem to be totally compatible across platforms. I too am upgrading soon as I have had this drive too long and it has burned many hours of data and Samsung is the way for me.:)
Dear Admin.,
Sorry about that other post, I hit enter. I have also lost my cd/dvd disk drives and it is very frustrating. I hear that deleting the upper or lower filter registry keys can mess up your itunes account? Also i have no clue where the filters are, because i have A LOT of folders in my registry. thx P.S. my dad is a wiz at computer stuff and he fixed it for me once, but the drive went missing again. Any idea why?
The two keys MAY indeed mess with iTunes but this can normally be resolved by uninstalling and re-installing iTunes.
I would ask your dad to help you out on this one. Messing with the registry can be pretty tricky. One wrong deletion and you can render your computer useless. Please be careful and take caution. Any more Qs, just hollar.
Sanctacaine – my drive is flashed with the latest firmware. It annoys me that NEC aren’t paying much interest to this, despite knowing that it affects a number of their products. Hey ho, what can you do?
Thanks for the Samsung tip.
Same problem under Vista Ultime 32bit , dual boot with XP.
there are no upper or lowerfilters keys to remove , what to do now ?!!
HELP!
thanks Ryan, you da man!
i have a acer laptop but they said i have no cd/dvd rom install so what should i do? it is an acer 5720z i think
I had this problem of the disappearing CD-ROM drive after installing iTunes on my Vista machine. the RegEdit fix worked great and allows iTunes to rip CDs to iTunes…but now my Roxio CD-Burner that was included with Vista doesn’t work. It’s either iTunes or Roxio. Any tips out there?
Hi Admin,
Well I got to say, that all of a sudden my CD ROM icon just disappear. I’m using a Laptop Presario V3000 and it comes with Windows Vista Home Basic.
I did follow your instructions by just removing the LowerFilter since i do not see UpperFilter on mine. Once done I rebooot my PC but still no result of being able to see my CD ROM icon in MY Computer and also in Device Manager.
can you help?
I have a Toshiba Satellite with Vista that is only a few months old. One day BOOM no cd-rom drive. I was about to do a complete recovery when I found your solution. IT WORKED PERFECTLY and only took a couple minutes to do.
Thanks!!!
There was no solutions what so ever at Toshiba or Microsoft.
I have an Asus M2M with an AMDX2 64 6000.
It has been really giving me hell with it’s RAM config so imagine how I felt when both the IDE and the SATA LG combo drives vanished!
Vista Ultimate 64bit only showed the “LowerFilter” in your suggested key but I deleted it anyway and wow! They’re BACK
Thanks for your help. Have a great day!
Thank you for the tip.
I’ve got a new Toshiba Satellite that simply refused to show the DVD drive. Your post solved my problem.
Keep up the good work
THANK YOU!!! I owned my Toshiba Satelitte laptop for less than a week and I lost my CD/DVD drive. I dreaded the call to the tech so I looked around online and found your tip. I’m not that computer literate when it comes to doing my own repairs, but I got brave and gave it a try and it worked like a charm. Thanks again.
I had the problem my driver had an error after installing anydvd on Vista Ultimate,Called MS they had no answer, reinstalling my driver did not work I tried everything but this did the trick. Thanks a lot
Ryan, as your 11 Aug post stated …the drives go bad, frequently….. Well that was the problem. Now I’m just waiting to get it back from their depot. Seems there is a shortage of drives. Took 2 weeks to get the parts. Anyway thanks for the help.
Lou,
I’m glad you were able to get it fixed. Unfortunately these things do happen, and quite often. I always have customers who are shocked as though someone has just died that their computer parts didn’t last them x amount of years, hehe.
After spending many hours with attempts at hardware repairs and viral scans, your fix has restored my DVD drives in 2 minutes.
Many, many, thanks. It was a real life saver. This fix needs wide distribution and a prominent place on Google. It is well buried.
Who initially found this fix and how did they find it?? What causes this to appear after months of normal operation. Nothing in the filters seemed to come from recent installs.
Robert,
If you don’t mind me asking, what search term did you use to find this site?
Thanks Everyone. I just bought a new PC with windows Vista and my cd rom drive disappeared. It was driving me nuts. i reinstalled the drivers and all and nothing worked. I tried this fix and it was back! You all ROCK! Thanks for sharing this with the rest of the world! Matt from AUSTRALIA!
Thank you soooo much for the help. Vista was being really stupid. And you are the the only people I found who could fix the drive problem. Thanks so much!
THANK YOU, i run windows vista on my Toshiba Satellite, when i installed daemon tools, my drive just dissapered! I couldnt find anything to fix it, till i found ur site. It Worked!! You are a life saver!
you rock!!!! im helping my mom over the phone right now. she bought an hp pavillion that never played cds or dvds from day one.
i had been looking for this problem online and was never able to find it til i stumbled across here. now it works
thanks so much.
Thanks so much I followed steps now it fully works thanks again!
I own a Dell and had the problem for a day or so until I goggled this website. thanks so much
Thanks. I thought I was going crazy, and was ready to return my new HP laptop. After this fix I realized that my desktop (which is running on XP) never did recognize the new (well, new one year ago) external dvd drive, so now I’m trying this fix on it too. Hoefully I’ll have as much success as I did on my lap. Thanks again!
i cant not get my cd rom drive to come up its not on my computer can you help me please thanks tami
I recently uninstalled some software for some USB tuners I no longer use (in Vista Ultimate), and just now noticed that my DVD drive was missing. I tried the fix above (only had the lowerfilter, which I deleted), but every bootup, Vista can’t find the proper driver. Aparently, a driver is loaded while it’s detecting (cdrom.sys), and if I cancel the detection, the drive will work. If I tell it to never look for a driver again, the drivers will uninstall… This is driving me nuts.
OK… got too fed up with this whole thing. My USB tuners wouldn’t even reinstall. I reverted to a restore point to before I uninstalled them, and everything is working again. It’s frightening to think how much software can affect hardware these days…
I had the same problem too. This happen after I try to install Norton 360. Initially it was OK, after installing it ask me to restart , that is were the trouble start. My laptop cant detect my CD drive.
Follow the instruction in editing the Registry but mine only have Upper . After restart, my CD is there again – THANX A LOT
I just about to give up fixing this missing drives problem. Thinking to reinstall Vista. Follow your suggestion and guess what it works. Aha. Many thanks mate!
It is AMAZING to me how many people have had this problem and fixed it using this technique (me included).. Has anyone found ANY acknowledgment or explanation from Microsoft or Apple as to why this is happening?????
Thanks again for this fix posting!!!
WOW!!
many thanks for the regedit fix, had already tried replacing dvd-drive….twice!
tried system restore…no good
after tearing my hair out, stumbled onto your site, deleted suggested files and hey presto, dvd is back!
thanks a million, your a true star!
This really helped. Thanks so much. Truly a life savior!
thanks I’m a Art student at VCU and I really needed to get this drive thing sorted out. I sincerely want to thank you all!!!!!…..Beaty
Windows Vista Business-
The registry (upper limit) key was deleted… nothing
Removed Itunes as well as the Itunes directory (left quicktime)
Rebooted machine… WORKED
Re-installed Itunes, removed Upper limit key again… nothing
Removed Itunes including directory, verified upper limit key was still gone… cd drive appeared.
Rebooted a couple of times and tried different cds, backups, everything seemed to work. Thanks for the fix. I wonder if this has to do with the way the Gear aspi file is given permissions across the system. I did not have the time to install Itunes under true admin priviledges but I assume that is why it worked for those of you that re-installed Itunes.
Funtastic, your solution worked in my lap top Toshiba Satellite A200-13O.
Thnaks for your information.
That was great, I thought I would have to re-install my OS. thanks so much!
It’s been said many times before, but THANKS! You rock!
Thank you! It worked & I was scared to delete!!! But it worked! Thanks! You saved me time!!!!!!
Hi
Thanks for all god advise I have had the same problem in Vista Ult 64
And adding the string Upperfilters in REG made the DVD’s looks alright in device manager. But after reboot vista is always trying to install dvd drivers whitout beeing able to open the device for installing the drivers. But the dvds are working but when I am trying to open ROXIO 10.0 roxio says the dvds are disabled, anyone got a fix?
This also works on the missing drive in Toshiba laptops. I thought it was a Matshita drive thing.
Awesome
Thanks
Will forward this to Toshiba and maybe they will release a fix for it
Claes, and Others,
The simple solution to your problem is to dump Roxio and use another burner. I have Windows Vista Premimium and use the Windows burner or Media Player. It works and I have had no problem after I “fixed my Reedit” Try that and see what happens. What have you got to lose except your worries.
Will the deleting of the filters work for me.I had a problem with the cd-rom drive on windows xp, so i decided to uninstall it and then reinstall it.I had my red recovery disc,so i could reinstall, but when i installed the disc, it said that my pc was not recognised as genuine,I had it upgraded by a technician about 2 years ago, so i dont know if this is the reason for the message.I now have no cd- rom drive, and dont know what to do.Can you help?
This was a great fix. I have a Toshiba and this solution was my savior. I upgraded from xp to vista, and my cd/dvd-rom dissapeared. Now I can use it again. I’m so happy!!!
Terry Mealing: Does your computer still have a known cd-rom listed under “my computer?” If so, then this solution may work for you.
A fix that works but takes alot of time is to “repair” Vista. You can do this by starting up your Vista and do the fixes in registry so that you can access your dvd and then insert your Vista dvd and do an uppgrade installation. During the installation Vista says it cant access the dvd but after “installing” uppgrading Vista everything works fine.
worked a treat, am running vista on a HP Compaq 6710b. Cheers for sharing the way out of a yet another sticky gates problem! when will he bloody learn?
Well, my Acer Aspire 5610Z (WinVista Home Basic, later upgraded to Home Premium) lost it’s DVD drive.
I tried the regedit trick. It didn’t work.
I’d heard there was an update (KB936825) that MS issued, which makes your drive disappear. I uninstalled that update.
That didn’t work.
I did a full system restore to factory settings using Acer’s “eRecovery management” software.
That didn’t work.
I’m ready to throw the darned computer out the window. Anyone have any other suggestions?
Stephen,
I like to remind people it is the simple stuff that gets you sometimes. I would open that puppy up and take out and reinstall the CD/DVD drive, unplug and plug in all the cables again. It could be a loose connection or a broken cable. Check for dust, or debris inside the case. Restart the computer and see if the Device Manager or the Control Panel recognizes the fact that a “new” drive is installed.
I hope this will solve your problem so the people in the apartments below your window are not in danger of being clobbered by a falling computer.
well I tries that solution and it never worked for me is there anything I could try to fix it
Thank you for the fix on the cdrom not recognised RYAN you are what makes the internet great. My drives suddently disappeared and your fix was 1st class. Good job
Well my daughter bought a laptop for university and day before she is due to leave the dvd drive dissapears.PANIC MODE.This fix was a lifsaver so thanks alot.By the way she had been playing with itunes so there is a connection somewhere.
I have an acer aspire 5100-3357 with vista home premium. my dvd-rom drive has apparently disappeared. i tried uninstalling and reinstalling itunes, as well as deleting both upper and lower filters. neither have worked. i hear disk spinning when inserted but drive is not recognized. i am very frustrated. help please
i also tried reinstalling my dvd-rom drivers. that failed as well
I am in the same boat you are scubasam77 but I have also taken apart my laptop and pulled out and replaced the dvd rom and that has not worked and I am ready to give up on and by a new laptop. if anybody has any other suggestions they would be greatly appreiated.
Well, I broke down, and went to CompUSA with my machine, as I also removed my DVD drive and couldn’t get it working.
Did the step above and worked for me. Appreciated, many thanks.
hi
i had the same problem as bryan
i also have a COMPAQ V3000 WINDOWS VISTA BASIC
my dvd/cd drive suddenly disappeared …. i even tried deleting the lower filter(upper was not there)
it didnt work!!!
seems that Bryan has found a solution ….. Please help me …. my laptop is hardly 3 weeks old…
To,
Bryan …
dude can u please tel me wat u did for ur system??? ill be very grateful….
Please im in distress … help me out!!!
P.S.
my drive keeps blinking continuously ….
Works great, have not tried to burn off a drive but will find out soon. I restarted my computer this morning and suddenly my drives were gone. I blame VISPA for VISTA for that one. Worthless application it is anyways, all stuff the user can do from there end. Eitherway, drivers are back now.. thank god.
cant find my dvd/cd driver i tried every thing
1. Click on the start menu.
2. If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.
6. and it didnt work
wat can i do some 1 plz tell me
My NEC DVD isn’t ‘missing’ in Vista it’s just gradually stopped working.
Like Kaare, I only saw a lower filter and deleted that. It’s made no difference.
When I search the web my NEC symptoms seem very common with no MS update on the horizon
ScottD,
There is probably something wrong with your optical drive. Try replacing the drive or getting a spare one to test with. If the filters do not work that normally indicates something wrong with the drive itself.
Ok now I have ried everything from doing the filters, to changing the drive to reformating my comp I am thinking I should erase vista and put XP back on unless there is anything else I can try
thank you for the solution re the disappearing rom drives [i am using Vista]. this has been a big headache for over 2 weeks and thanks to yu the headache has gone.
Hi, someone sent me a link to this page because when i turn my laptop on and put a CD or DVD in, it just spins and nothing comes up (its Visat by the way). So i have been reading this page and without sounding thick because i just want to make sure, do i just do exactly what you (Ryan) have said to do at the top of this page? It wont delete anything will it? It just restores the CD/DVD drive yeah? Thankyou, i will be back with an update. xx
I meant Vista by the way, sorry. x
YES! This DOES work and is safe if you are cautious to get into the EXACT registry chain as listed above. There are a ton nearby that are similar so be careful.
I have an HP Pavillion DV6000 that I bought August 2007. It is running Vista Home Premium and kept losing the CD/DVD Rom drive… I was told a lot of things from HP and Fry’s Electronics all of which didn’t help or would have left me without a computer for a long time while they “fixed it”….
Thank you for sharing this knowledge so those of us seeking help for ourselves can find it! It worked like a charm, the steps were easy to follow.
Now…. my ONLY question is why to heck Microsoft doesn’t do anything about this issue so it doesn’t occur in the first place??? This is quite a big deal to have ignored or avoided dealing with.
Sarah,
As long as you only delete the exact key that I listed, you should be fine. Make sure you double check and then delete once! Like the old addage, measure twice, cut once!
Dawn,
They often times don’t care about what we think. It’s the little guys who try to make a difference. They’re grown to such a huge level they really feel like they can become stagnant and not need to change or improve since they have such huge market share. With new companies such as Mozilla coming along, and many others, they are slowly but surely being pushed back into the game of making changes and catering to the customers’ needs. In the mean time, it’s little sites like this that can help you out. Hope this helps.
Dawn R,
the fix does seem to be a little selective in its sucess, I have the same HP Pavilion dv6000 as you and the fix, thow it show up more information about the optical drive than it did before, still doesn’t fix the problem on my computer. The only CD’s that work correctly are off the shelf audio CD’s, no DVD’s or other types od CD’s work correctly, the spinning disk being the normal reaction. I have also tried with known working external drives and get the same results (that is they don’t work either).
Adam
Adam,
Normally when that happens that tends to be a bad optical drive. The only thing I can tell you is if you have a bootable DVD, like say a Vista install disk, you can try booting from that while your computer starts. If it boots, then there is something wrong within the operating system and is a software issue. If it continues to boot into Vista and not Vista’s setup, then the optical drive itself is bad. The laser can only read certain CDs as opposed to DVDs.
Cool. Thanks, Well im currently doing what your list says and ive come to the bit that you said would say ‘upperfilter’ and ‘lowerfilter’ and there are only ones that say LowerFilters REG_MULTI_SZ Pfc PxHelp20′ and underneath ‘LowerFilters.Bak REG_MULTI_SZ PxHelp20′
Do i need to click and deleete these?
Thanks x
Sarah,
I wouldn’t delete those filters. I think you are in the wrong Hot key site. Double check and make sure that the Hot key area is exactly the one in the instructions. Mine just stated plainly that they were upper or lower filters and no fancy extentions.
Good luck.
Mark W – Thankyou for your reply but before i had seen that you replied i deleted the first filter i listed on here and restarted the comp and BINGO! I couldn’t believe it, i was sooooo happy so a MASSIVE THANKYOU to RYAN for this fix!
However, ive tried to install the Sonicare program because i have a new MP3 player and i had so much trouble with it i wanted to throw the laptop out of the window! It kept saying i had limited useage because i was not an administrator and then when i clicked on the bit that said something about logging on as an administrator, it let me in properly. However it would not let me transfer my cd to my MP3 player. Then (sorry if im boring you) i tried to get into Sonicare again and it plainly would not let me and started saying it was going to ‘reboot’ and that i had to uninstall it and start over. I did and it still wouldn’t work!!
Does this ring any bells with anyone because its driving me crazy and i want to use my new MP3 player
Thanks Xx
That is the best FIX for the missing DVD – CD problem.
But VISTA & Symantec Norton 360 will also dis-able the DVD – CD with no solution available on their site or the Internet.
You have to remove Norton 360 and apply that registry fix to get all back to normal. Forget about help from Symantec on this subject.
Several days and 30 something hours later – are my credentials.
(note: NOD32 is #1 and Symantec #2 rated protection)
NOD32 will not under VISTA disable your DVD – CD drive.
i look in above path and see nothing of upperfilter or lower filter. same as few other guys, 3 folders, nothing about filter in any. my cd/dvd is recognised in device manager, says it is there in my computer, put disc in and nothing. looked at back of drive and there is no plastic peices to cover any of the prongs if that is what you are referring to as master/slave. all i want to do is go back to xp, is there anyway do without it recognizing? or anyway to format without using xp cd?
please any help would be appreticated.
Ryan
Yeah, there should be a small plastic cap to cover some of the prongs in the back of the drive. That determines the drive position as Master, Slave or Cable. Maybe the missing cap is causing the problem. Since the device is recognized in the device manager, it looks like a problem with the cables or the DVD/CD Drive.
I am not sure about reconverting your software back to XP and having the drive work. You would have to find out from someone else. How about it out there?? I would like to know too.
I have WINDOWS VISTA AND I ALSO HAVE LIMEWIRE AND EVERYTIME I TRY TO BURN SOMETHING IT SAY CONNECT BURNER AND RESTART PLAYER AND IT WAS WORKING ALRIGHT BEFORE
I ALSO NOTICE THAT CD/DVD IS MISSING BUT I LOOK IN INSTALL HARDWARE AND IT SAID THAT CD/DVD HITACHI DRIVER IS INSTALL
WHAT CAN I DO
I DELETED LOWER FILTER AND I DONT SEE ANY UPPER FILTER IN THAT
the fix has worked perfectly, and to think i was going to phone up a computer doctor! thanks mate
THANKS and thanks and thanks, i made my day. i was in a middle of a project when my driver disapaired. a disaster for me and clients.
your help saved my day,
No DVD drive, either Plextor PX-800A or HP 1040i. Clean install to a new PC, all hardware Vista Certified. Installed Vista Home Premium 64 from the DVD drive, so drive/cable/master/MB/BIOS is OK.
Drive disappeared. Posted on Microsoft Vista Hardware forum, only solution offered: delete filters. Didn’t work.
Couldn’t see any optical drive in Device Manager- gone. Didn’t even have any choice for CD/DVD during Add Hardware auto-scan.
I tried this – Regedit, same key as the ‘delete-the-filters’ tip. At the bottom of the key, I changed SilentInstall from 1 to 0, and the same with it’s neighbor, from 1 to 0.
Bingo! NOW I CAN see a drive in Device Manager after an Add Hardware auto-scan. So if I HAD a 64-bit DVD driver for either of my 2 drives, I’d be running now.
Anyone know where I can find 64-bit Vista drivers?
Hope this helps a bit.
Aloha
I so much appreciate you for this regedit idea, I have window vista DVD-CD drive problem and for now the big deal has become ABC(simple)
Ok i did your solution and i restarted my computer, but nothing happened. I checked back in the regestry and the “upper”/”lower” files arent there. But my cd drive still isnt showing up on My Computer…what do i do?
OK so i went the microsoft forums, im guessing thats where you got the solution. Turns out that deleting the files did nothing for my computer (although should have ) except now i see it my ” Device manager”. Its saying its installed and working properly but i still dont see it in My computer. wtf?
Josh,
If you still can’t see it that means you’re experiencing an actual hardware problem and not something related to just Windows.
I would try to uninstall the CDROM drive from device manager. If that fails to resolve the problem then I would assume your drive may be bad.
Another thing you can attempt to do, if you are familiar with computers, is to boot off of a bootable CD such as a Windows installation disk.
i tried to un install it already and re install it from add new hardware wizard but it wouldnt unistall! i dont have any installtion disks or i would have already.
My drive is working properaly its says. if all fails im de-grading my computer
It worked like a charm !!!!! I had Vista Basic installed on a Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 Laptop. It didn’t recognize the CD/DVD. After trying your suggestion it works fine. Thanks a bunch !!!!!!!
look above it didnt work for anyone with an ACER
Thank you soooooooo much, worked like a charm!!! I have been dealing with this beyond annoying issue for a while and you saved me. Worked like a charm
i have neither upperfilter and lowerfilter..
what can i do?
nocturnal,
If neither is there then that may indicate a possible hardware problem or an issue with some other portion of your computer.
i`ve fix the problem.
using the regedit also.
but another version, where i just click the regedit icon, then it automatically change the value of my registry.
anyway, thanks for the brilliant idea to fix this problem.
Ok this is madness….have the same problme with missing DVD drive on my HP pavilion running Vista Ultima. The drive doesn’t even show up in device manager. No reg fix worked for me, BUT make your PC do what we do when we have a problem: Sleep on it. Seriously. Put your pc in “sleep” mode and then wake it up again. Bingo the drive is back. Please don’t ask me why, but it worked for me.
that thing happen again..i just send my laptop for warranty claim.
whatever it is, i bought a laptop which is vista compatible, so, i want my laptop use vista, not enough with xp.
WOW!…Life saver..
I use WinXP. My motherboard had a problem a few MONTHS ago and I bought a new one to replace it. After I installed it, I just found out that I could not find my CD/DVD/USB drive..
I tried to sovle this problem for months….Now…after delete those “filter” values….my PC is working now….
Thanks for a million
I don’t not quite sure that is the right way to sort but mine work apparently.
IN device Manager- Storage Controller
Remove whatever in there and Restart again! Lucky it worked!!
Before that i did with the Regedit and Remove Reg Key of Filters but failed.
If you can see your CD ROM drive in your device manager, re install the driver again might help -
location is – c:\windows\system32\drivers\cdrom.sys
I think Storage Controller is a messer in this case. When I rid off this, the standard ATA Channel appears!!
the best thing is, after my dvd rom disappear, my bios doesnt even detect the dvd rom,
so, i just leave it for about one hour, and then turn back on,
everything goes fine.
another solution that im using now, i just took off the dvd rom, leaving a big hole on my laptop.
im tired and sick of this.
i`ve send this laptop to the technician, but, it doesnt make trouble at all. when i came back home, turn it on, the problem happen again.
You also have to make sure that you have RAID controllers installed in device manager because these are in connection with your cd/dvd drives. I also made this mistake and tried everything, after I let Vista look for some RAID drivers online it worked fine. Not on all Vista languages though, then you have to search for them yourself.
Hi there,
I deleted upperfilter from the directory below the lowerfilter direcctory by accident. Now my computer wont load up. it kept on restarting automatically by it self. After the vista logo appears, this blue screen comes then the computer restart by itself and it wont load any cd. so there is no way i can repair it without using windows cd. Is there any solution?
p.s. I dont have floppy drive drive.
Thanks.
During startup does it give you the option to do a “repair?” There is this thing called ERD Commander that is built into Vista. You should be able to get to your desktop via the “repair” feature and then do a system restore back to an earlier date.
Try that.
Also be very careful with the registry. As per my warning, you can screw your computer up big time.
it doesnt give me the repair option. only option i get is ” safe mode and last known config. its still restart even if you chose them option.
Thanks Ryan,
My dvd drive was not recognized by the system, and I tried your trick
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
deleting those filters and it worked, THANKS A LOT BUDDY,
For others you are about to try this trick, please make a copy of your registry by exporting the original registry, just in case you make some mistake so you can revert back.
Thanks Ryan.
workes great on my son’s Dell but when ITunes upgrades itself it deletes the cd drive again.
can someone explain to me What is RAID driver?
Thanks, removing these keys fixed the problem. Too bad I didn’t know about this before I reload the OS.
Jean-Marc
hy,
I had the same problem, and I glad that Your solution helpd me, I found and deleted only “LowerFilter” and after restart everything okey again.
THANKS!!!
anyone there to help me?
Jay,
Turn your computer on, hit F8 continously until you see a menu.
The only opytion thats comes up on the screen when i press f8 is “advanced boot options”
options are :
safe mode
safe mode with networkin
safe mode with command prompt
enable boot looging
enable low-resoul
directory service restore mode
debugging mode
disable automatic restart on system failure
disable drive signature enforcement
start windows normally.
technical information:
*** STOP: 0×0000007B (0xFFFFF980008079c), 0xFFFFFFFFC0000034, 0X0000000000000000000, 0X000000000000000000000
Do you have Windows Vista or XP?
It looks like you may have to do a repair installation or a non-destructive system recovery using your system recovery disks or partition.
I cant load any disk on my computer as my cd drive was disappeared. I got windows vista ultimate edition. i got the original vista CD but it wont load up.
Normally when you place a disk on the cd-rom it always ask you, if you wanna reboot from the disk. now i cant even get that option.
Jay
That means something is wrong with your CDROM drive. I suggest if you have warranty left, taking it to a repair center. Otherwise you may have to consult some type of repair service.
Jay, your problem is same with mini.
im using vista ultimate.
can someone explain to me what is RAID driver?
hey, yeah about the “no-entry” dvd-rw problem. (the non-smoking sign over the dvd drives)…. well like everyone else with an ACER laptop, i have tried everything on this forum and nothing has worked. ive done everything exactly right and dvd-rw is still not working. it reads the title of my dvds, but will not play them. the non-smoking sign is even over my virtual drive. weird. ive uninstalled itunes, daemon tools, limewire, and others and have done all the msconfig start up stuff and regedit stuff with the filters. nothing. still not working. i dont understand. ive searched google and have read every forum that i can find from top to bottom and nothing. ive restored my computer to 2 weeks ago and still nothing. pleaseeeeeee someone help me. pleaseeeeeeeeeeee ive NEVER had a problem like this that i couldnt solve myself.
Thank you. I also had this problem and your fix did the trick. Beauty!
Thanks for the fix – worked perfectly. One day the CD/DVD was woring the next it was missing! MAD
Aaron,
It sounds like you have done everything possible and if the Acer is under warrentee I would take it back and exchange it. The 2nd thing is that since the DVD reads titles of your disks it seems to work. Maybe the drive thinks that anything you put in it is an illegal copy. I wonder if it is a security setting in Vista,the DVD drive, Acer or Bios that is at fault. I don’t know how to check that but it sounds like you might. Keep us posted. Good luck
RAID Drivers,
Can you get any information if you GOOGLE it ? If Google is a bust use ASK dot Com, Yahoo dot com,Soople dot com,Answer dot com, or one of the other search engines. They don’t do a search the same way and who knows you might get lucky.
To myself,
i have fixed my problem sooo…. ATTN ALL ACER LAPTOP USERS….. this solution fixed my laptop so it may work for you… the problem is the aspi 32bit driver… for some reason the driver got screwed up. vista needs an aspi 32bit driver to run the dvd player, this could be the reason also that some of you said that cds would work but not dvds. here is a link for the fix…. http://www.frogaspi.org/download.htm#frogaspi …. just follow instructions there. although the “no-entry” icon hasnt disappeared from my dvd-rw and virtual drives… they now DO work. and i guess thats all that matters in the long run right? i have just done this, so i dont know how long this fix will hold up. let me know if anyone finds a better solution. now can someone please tell me way my ACER laptop, running vista, will not connect to my lexmark x5250 printer through a network? hahaha. and then after that, i would like to know why my 1gig USB mobliemate flash drives dont work with vista either haha. problem after problem.
Thanks a million dude, I’ve been struggling with this P.O.S. Operating System since i bought a new PC in February… The dvd drives didn’t work at all, but now they’re working fine! Thanks again!
Cheers
So 277 replies to this post and they can’t release an actual fix/update to fix the issue…I have been dealing with this for over 3 months, tried all kinds of solutions including buying a external drive. Geek Squad (only because i bought the 3 year warr.) wanted to take my computer for 2 weeks and probably would have handed me back a “fresh” machine. THANK YOU!
friends i have had this a few times on restating my computer (vista ultimate ) i have simply gone into device manager and right clicked on dvd/cd rom devices and scan for changes it will then find any devices u have everytime leave your registry alone hope this helps
kenski,
Unfotunately, I do wish that was true but it isn’t. I tried that when I experienced this and nothing happened. People here have reported uninstalling and re-installing to no avail either. If it worked for you, great, otherwise, stick with this registry hack.
Thanks for the fix with the missing DVD Drive, works fine cheers
Well, I followed advice above with my HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop and got a replacement DVD drive from HP. I am back at square one again where neither the registry edit, reinstalling drivers or now even a new DVD drive makes it work.
The drive appears in Explorer, plays music CD’s, play movie DVD’s, but thinks that anything else is a blank writeable CD. Not much help when you want to install software from a DVD such as Microsoft Office or other apps.
I am out of ideas other than reinstalling windows, but since that could mean getting back a blank computer without any apps installed I dare not take the risk right now. By the way, I never had I-tunes installed on this computer, I am a software developer and luckily I was able to install my most common working environments on the laptop before the full use of the optical drive disappeared…
I have had this issue with both a desktop system and my new HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop. I found the solution before on Microsoft’s website, but had lost my reference to it. I happened across your site and found the registry entry again. I read Adam’s entry as he has the same model of laptop as mine. I did find a low filter setting and deleted it. After reboot I am now watching a DVD on my dv6000. I am not sure why his DVD drive failed to respond. I made the mistake several times of clicking on the folders below the data string, and not the data string itself. Thank you Sir, for having consideration for others and sharing your research!!
Adam,
looks like there might be a motherboard or factory setting issue. The only way around it might be to install your programs with an external CD/DVD drive plugged into your USB port. As far as the DVD recognizing “other” media it must be a setting or a mistake. Any ideas out there? That is really frustrating and a real bummer.
I have tried with an external USB DVD drive and it has the same problems as with the internal, so I am out of luck to use an external to install software. I am sure this is somehow a windows os issue and/or driver issue.
The actual driver file on my computer is cdrom.sys ver 6.0.6000.16386, is that what others have? I am using Windows Vista Business Edition, supposedly up to date..
There are varios options from HP for the internal drive, mine is the TS-L632L ATA lightscribe, is that what you have Loyd?
Adam,
I am sorry to hear that you are still having this problem.
I have a lightscribe (HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T20L) DVD drive
My Driver Version is the same as yours.(6.0.6000.16386).
If it is a driver problem then your drive might have an issue with this particular driver, which makes me wonder why HP would send out the same replacement drive knowing this issue exixts.
Just to check my understanding, are you just highlighting {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} or are you opening the folders below the entry? The filter only shows up in the right pane when {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} is highlighted.
I contacted HP before I changed my setting, so if they give me a solution that looks like it would work for you, I will be happy to pass it along.
Loyd, I have the same DVD/CD problem with both the internal and an external drive. Yes, I found the filter key by only selecting the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} key and only deleted that one (the LOWERFILTER). Also, I got the replacement drive from HP after they went through the filter setting fix in the registry with me on the phone (they had finally heard of it themselves, the first time I had called them when this problem showed up they hadn’t).
Be great to hear there is another fix other than re-installation of the OS. Thanks.
Adam
thank you , i got fix the problen already .
at first i think my dvd room was corrupted,
i buy new dvd room ,but still got that problem.
so, i try to find the solution at web site ,
i have saw your post , then follow step by step.
my english is very poor ,
but i must leave a message to you ,
thank you very much.
DoGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!! ur gangsta! i cant beleive it worked! dat’s right!!! keep makin problem fixers like dat dogg!!
Thanks, it worked great on my Vista Ultimate home-built system. Only one of the two filters was there, but deleting that reference to the Roxio driver file PxHlpa64.sys which was in my Windows\system32\drivers directory. It may possibly have been placed there in an aborted installation of DVD player software.
Thanks this help me out so much. This is the second time i have had this problem on my HP laptop with vista. HP helped me the first time. They had me do something like this but when i rebooted i got the blue screen of death. This one worked great. Thanks again.
Thank you for posting this fix! Saved me a headache and hours of time by not reinstalling Vista. I used this fix on a Toshiba Satellite, U305-S7446.
I tried this registry hack, and on two different machines xp and vista and both worked flawlessly, the difference
in windows vista, you need to run the regedit application
as administrator, and it works
If you don’t know how to run programs as admin just right click on the app and run as admin, walaah!!!! it works.
cool! at last a fix for this prob has arrived! tnx dude! ur d coolest than those at microsoft! they just dont care about their customers… all that matters to them is the product… sigh… but still im a bit disappointed in Windows Vista… anyway, still hoping… tnx again dude! i’ll try this one… friendster: paulo_tena012@hotmail.com
Hmmm…I have the same problem on my HP pavilion and I have no filters under that famous reg key. I used to be able to put the pc to “sleep” and when I woke it up, the drive was back. But not anymore. It is gone and it won’t come back. On top of it, I get an error when I try to open regedit as admin. I SO want my cd drive back so I can re-install XP and forget all about vista. Any ideas?
uhhmmm… i just want to share this, my dvd rom just came back and you know what, i didnt even change any in my reg keys… The only reason that I did was to hibernate it once and when I came back from school turn on(resuming windows) my notebuk(pavillon dv6244us) the drive is now visible… I was shocked that time because i really didnt even done anything… can someone explain this to me… is rhis a miracle or what? this weird…
Niels and Hewlett,
I don’t think there are any miracles. Niels, I would use a external CD drive or player to install XP and maybe your CD drive will reappear. I hope so.
Hewlett, I would back everything up and hope that putting your computer to sleep will solve your problem. Good Luck, it seems it is only a temporary solution with other people. So be prepared for other options from this site.
ok… I think your right Mr. Marc. Tnx again. Good luck guys!
It’s great!!!!!!! It’s work for my PC that running vista. My PC have missed DVD-ROM that use USB connection include DVD-ROM that connect through IDE after done what is your advising so cool, I already designed to stop to run vista but now I come back I like Windows Media Center when play movie DVD on it. Thanks for your advising again
THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH FOR THIS FIX. It worked perfectly on vista ultimate. I publish a magazine and am thinking of switching to mac as it is difficult to layout a mag with all the problems I randomly have w/ windows.
Hi Guys. Im sorry im so clueless when it comes to computers, but my Toshiba P105 that i just bought 2 days ago does not detect the cd/dvd-rom drive. when i go into “device manager” it says it is there and working fine but when i open “my computer” its not there.
and it doesnt read anything i insert.
could u please post screen shots or what you are doing coz i dont want to break my pc or pay $40000 just for someone to look at it.
please im going crazy its a new computer i cant even use it!!!!
I running vista -64 i lost my cd and dvd rom drives but got them back but when i put a disc in that worked a few weeks ago the drives say insert disc, the drives are sony and one is only a few months old, i can not reinstall vista cos it wont boot from disk and have tried deleteing upper and lower in the registry but it does not seem to work still if anyone could please help that would be fantastic. Thank you!!!
Hiya please can you help me.
I lost my cd and dvd rom drive using vista 64 home premium i got them back but when i insert known disks that worked a few days ago, it just says insert disk and does not read them.
I tried deleteing and reinstalling the drives but thats does not work neither did deleteing lower and upper in registry any advice would be great.
Thanks
Holly & Johnny,and Dozer
It sounds like you have newer computers. I would take it back to the store after copying this fix and printing it out. Then have the “back room boys” fix it under the warrentee. Keep bugging them until they do. There is no excuse for this stuff coming out of retail outlets. Tell them you need a computer ASAP and see if you can borrow one until yours is fixed. They might exchange your computer for a newer one. Its worth a try. All they can say is no. Back up your data and programs so if they exchange your computer for a newer one, you have your stuff. Be sure to “overwrite” the other one with a wipe product if you have to return it. That way they don’t find out your passwords and personal stuff.
Stay tuned to this site in case somone comes up with a”fix ” when the deletion of the filters don’t work. Otherwise cast spells, mutter incantations, and hope for the best.
Hi i got the some problem here but i can’t find regedit, i only get regedit_16×16. What can i do now???
Johnny & Dozer,
When you attempt to boot from a CD/DVD and it does not work, that usually means there is something wrong with your drive. If you swap the drive for a known working one and it still does not work then that may indicate a bad motherboard.
Evo,
Go to the start button in the lower left hand corner of your screen. If you have XP, click on Run, type in regedit and hit enter.
If you have Vista, just type in the search box, regedit and then enter.
Marc,
I really appreciate your return visits and helping the others who I haven’t had the chance to help yet. It means a lot to me. I really do appreciate it!
thank you very much its working!!!!
Damn… its missing again…
Question: Can we back up the registry before doing it so..?
how can i back up the reg? help plss
Is this a permanent fix? I’ve noticed that if I go into device manager and scan for Hardware Changes, it makes my drive appear right that second. Then it disappears after trying to use Windows DVD Maker which was when the first error for it disappearing occurred.
The Registery can be backed up. I have never had to do it but I would Google Regedit for instructions. I use Smart Computing Magazine for information or PC World. You can go to their sites to find information with their search engines. It depends on what OS you run as to how you approach backing up the registery. I wouldn’t mess with it unless you have detailed insturctions and a confident person to hold your hand. It helps.
thank´s i am from mexico and i miss my cd rom too but i can read cd rom´s again thank you so much
Missing DVD drive in Vista? Here’s fix #3!
If you are using a wide cable to the DVD or CD drive, it means you are using PATA. PATA support on the motherboard may be provided by another chip, one that Vista doesn’t handle too well (no drivers, bad drivers etc)
The trick? BUY A SATA DVD DRIVE! That way you won’t have to make any Registry hacks, because the Intel ICHx chip handles SATA, which Vista recognizes very well indeed, after all your hard drive is SATA and it’s working fine, right?
Maybe in a month or two the PATA chip drivers will catch up with Vista. My MB is ASUS P5KC, my SATA chip is ICH9, my PATA chip is JMicron.
Hope this helps you.
Aloha!
Bill
Thank you SO MUCH! I’ve been looking for how to fix this problem for ages now. I bought my new Toshiba laptop in August and had the missing Cd/DVD drive problem after installing and using iTunes. I was told by Toshiba to reinstall the OS, which I did, and the drive worked again. However, I decided to install iTunes last month again (because I was sick of not being able to use my iPod) and I had the same problem, but now the drive works! Thank you so much, again. You just made my night!
This was the only site that gave me REAL advice on my missing cd/dvd driver! All the other sites had plain BS, no real help!!! Thanks so much!!!!!!
THIS WORKS ITS AWESOME! Whom ever posted the regedit fix is a comp savior! just edited the key like he said. Rebooted and boom fixed.
I am definately printing this out to put in a binder of Vista fixes, it has enough bugs to start one ;p
Need urgent help!!!
I’ve deleted the lower and upper filters carefully but it is not helping me.
Spent hours on this until trying key removal.
Vista 64 ultimate SATA + IDE motherboard
Internal and external (usb), dvd/cd drives were affected.
Found lower filter key and deleted it. Drives were restored.
I purchased a SATA dvd/cd rom drive to avoid the problem, but that drive did not work until th key was removed. So now I need a vista compliant pci sata controller card so I can use all my hard drives and my new dvd rom drive – but I can’t find one.
many thanks for posting the solution ……………Beerwulf
thanks for the fix! Works on my gateway notebook. After talking to gateway to no avail, your a lifesaver! Boy have I bookmarked this site!
Hiya i have vista installed on my laptop (brand new laptop) and same thing has happened. only when i look for the registry keys ur on about i can only find up til HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\
there is no ‘class’ option for me!
can anyone help! i have no idea about pcs really and have no idea how to fix this problem!
I fixed my PC with an external cd drom drive.
Now i got a new problem. When i press the power button. The CPU start running but both of the monitor was blank. I cant see anything on the monitor. My mouse/keyboard not turning on.
Everything inside my CPU looks fine. Anyone got any clue?
Jay, I just had my computer at work do this, I think. Is their a cursor blinking on the screen? you could possibly have a fried processor on your hands. Otherwise, try clearing the cmos and see if that works first.
Jay,
You might have a fried CPU or clogged CMOs but I would check your cables to your monitors. It could be a simple thing. I don’t see any reason why your CPU should be fried unless there is something you forgot to mention. Are your monitors plugged in at both ends? That is another big one that people forget. Another thing you can check is the boot order in the BIOs setup. If You know how to do that great, if not there are instructions on Google. It might be that the computer is trying to read the external CD Rom Drive as a hard drive. Good luck and keep us posted.
Once i fixed my pc before. i have fixed my internal cd drive aswell.
I was using the internet all sudden the computer crashed. so i had to press the restart button.
Nothing comes up on the screen. i can see the CPU is running and the green light “on” on the motherboard.
I checked all cables, they all fitted properly.
P.s I do leave my PC on most of the time. I hardly turn it off.
Specs:
4600 AMD athlon X2 Core
2GB RAM
768MB DUAL GRAPHICS CARD
Windows vista Ubuntu
Stevo,
My computer wont even load up. I cant even see the boot menu. Nothing comes up on the monitor.
Jay,
Before you ditch the processor, there is another thing you might try. Sometimes the RAM boards become dislodged and need to be pressed down in their sockets again. Heating and cooling works them loose and it prevents booting to Windows. IT sounds like you have a failure to launch Windows because you see the Bios information. Since you couldn’t reboot after being on the internet I wonder if pressing the reset button jared an intermitant board in the RAM. While you are there check the internal connections to the power supply,drives, etc and also that little battery that everyone misses next to the processor. Otherwise good luck and mybe someone else out there has some ideas.
Lost DVD/CD driver: I wish I had found your site sooner. I just had Gsquad fix this problem for the second time on my new Vista loaded desktop. Now that I found your site I can fix it myself next time. Thanks.
I’ve just tried the registry fix on my Acer system running Vista Home Premium, I’ll let you know if it’s worked in a moment!
Well, I did exactly as you said and the Drive still isn’t showing up at all, damn
OMG! I have a Toshiba Satellite that came with a DVD-RW drive and Window Vista Home Premium. The DVD drive stopped working after a few week (maybe after some Vista’s update), and the device manager said it was a driver’s problem. I did exactly the steps above and my DVD drive came back after rebooting! This problem stuck me for a few months and I didn’t want to install Vista again. Thank you so much!
eeeeyyyyy…….thnx a lot guyzzzzz…..it really workd 4 me….i had my dvddrive missin but this gt my drive work again…
Just a quick note…I had a “Code 10 Error” as well saying that my driver could not start. I used your instructions before and it worked to bring my CD-DVD Drive back; however, I have come to the conclusion that iTunes has been the culprit (I have read many other message boards with the same problem). As soon as I did your recommended fix, it corrupted my iPod and iTunes. I had to re-install iTunes…and voila…Code 10 Error again. It is shameful that nothing has been done by Microsoft and/or iTunes to repair this issue. This is extremely frustrating…I sent a troubleshooting message to Microsoft quite a while ago, and I never heard anything back. Go figure. At any rate, thanks for the temoporary fix.
Please help!! I’ve deleted the upper and lower filters still at device manager it is giving error code 39 and when I am scanning for the drivers it is showing it is already up to date but showing device error.Even If I am booting with vista CD to repair the windows it is also not helping me.
I am not able to use my DVD drive need help||
Many Thanks guy!! It worked for my laptop (HP pavillion dv2517tx). I’ve just only deleted “Lower filter” and restart laptop, finally i got my DVD-ram drive BACK!!! Thank you again and again.
ahmed,chack your computer for driver updates and look for software youhave recently intalled that might be causing the problem and uninstall them
Thanks this worked.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:
Click on the start menu.
If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
Restart Windows.
Let me know if this works.
Hi
I have used ‘cdgone.reg’ script, it was ok until the next reboot
Now it’s gone again….
I don’t know what to do
Please HELP!
I have a Toshiba Satellite 205 that has this problem. It’s been in shop once and came back ok, but the problem re-occured.
I’ve done the registry hack and that worked for a while, but the problem is back.
Also done a really cold boot (Shut Down and removed the battery and let it sit for 1/2 hr.) It worked a couple of times but not all of the time.
The drive shows up in the Bios, but not in the Device manager. It does come up momentarily during a reboot, but once Windows starts, it is not there.
Any more Ideas. Toshiba wants me to do a restore, but I’m reluctant to, since It will take a long time to re-install the software, and I expect the problem will come back when I get the computer up and running again with my software and MS’s online updates.
I have an audio recording program, LP Recorder and LP Ripper for making CDs from LPs. Other than that, no ITunes or similar after market multimedia software.
Joel,
You may not have I-Tunes but you have a LP ripper and recorder that had to have some software to work with your computer. I would unplug the LP system, unstall its software, and reboot Then see if your drive shows up. If It does then there is your problem. If it doesn’t, it sounds like your problem is with Windows. Unplug the the internal CD drive and plug it in again. There might just be some dirt or corrosion on the contacts and then Windows might recognize it. If that doesn’t work, see if you can manually add a drive by making the system think that your internal is an external CD drive. Otherwise you might have to talk to Microsoft for a workaround.
Well i took my RAM OUT n put it back in. Checked the battery aswell.
Nothing seems working. The processor is running. Keyboard & mouse not working at all. nothing comes on the monitor screen.
Anyone had the same problem before?
Is it fair to say that if you running Windows Vista, you will lose your DVD RW driver every time you upgrade iTunes? Also, you will not be able to burn disks using iTunes???
I have also realized that if you go into “device manager,” you can “scan for hardware changes” and that seems to bring it back.
This registry was very helpfull. At first looked like its going to be complicated but if you pay close attention to direction from editor it is not that hard. Just make sure you are at the right places and that you are deleting right upper or lower filters. In my case it was just lowerfilter. By fallowing this I was able to fix my friends PC problem. Thanks again .
It worked! I had a lower but not an upper filter in my Vista, but it worked like charm. Lovely, thanks!
tnx to Cole and to the original of this instructions…. u guys \m/RoCK\m/… no need to reinstall and uninstall my itunes coz even the new version of itunes don’t work. but this things really help. hope no problems i’ll encounter esp. by burning stuff. tnx again guys… 1thing: i do have upper case of LOWERFILTERS but din’t delete only the lowercase of upper&lowerfilters.
cole
Nov 5th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
Thanks this worked.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:
Click on the start menu.
If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
Restart Windows.
Let me know if this works.
is there anyone that can help me out?
Thanku so much……U saved me from a fate worse than death…. may god bless u…..
I ALREADY DID THIS
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
BUT I HAVE FIREFOX AND, I TRYIED IN (REGISTRY EDITOR) I WENT TO (EDIT) MENU AND I HIT FIND, AND I TYPED UPPERFILTERS AND LOWERFILTERS CAN I DO IT LIKE THAT?
I did up to the regedit thing. I searched it, and got the folder to come up. But there is no “right panel” or anything. All that’s there is Name – (Defualt) Type – REG_SZ Data – (Value Not Set) … Please help me!
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the advice. I took the first notebook back to HP for them to sort out as I bought it for a customer…. believe it or not they took the Laptop back as DOA. I was reissued with a new one and the same happened. It seemed to be as soon as I plugged in the flash drive and had to reboot afterwards it vanished. Thanks to you guys it has been solved…….BRAVO
Hello everyone,
I apologize about this post being somewhat confusing for many people.
I’ve uploaded a screen shot as to which entries you should delete.
The two items in the RIGHT pane is the two items that you should delete.
http://www.randomfix.com/images/registry_vista_missing_dvd.gif
By Mistake I Clicked On The DVD Drives In Safely Remove Hardware.I Am Using vista Home Premium. Both Drives Are Missing In My Computer And Ext.Hard Drives Dony Work. Any Ideas?
Marc et al I tried un-installing the LP Recorder and LP Ripper. No help. Finally did a System Restore and thought I had the problem licked, but it came back again.
One thing I have noticed is that the CD Drive is always available (ie the light flickers and the tray will open and close) before I log on. As soon as I log on it usually stops working and does not show up in explorer or Device Manager. After I did the Restore, the low filter re-appeared in the registry, but deleting it did not do any good.
My Satellite 205 is still under warrantee, so it is going back to Toshiba.
I already tried the “upperfilters” fix. It worked for about a week. Then, the drive disappeared again…and when I looked in the registry, there was no upperfilters and no lowerfilters. Any ideas on what to try now?
Leonard,
I would unplug the external hard drives for now and concentrate on the internal recognition. Turn off the computer. Unplug the cable to the internal DVD drive and replug. Then reboot the computer and see if it recongnizes the DVD. Your system should find it under the plug and play in Microsoft. If it does, then try for the external drives. Plug them in one at a time and restart the computer each time. That might solve your problem. IF not call your local computer club or tech support.(APCUG)and find your city. If your system is new have it repaired under their warrentee.
To all hands,
Smart Computing dot com or Google is a great way to find answers to your problems. There is Tech Soup and C-net that also provides answers or provides links to those who can. Give them a try. That is what I do when I am stumped. The other resourse is my local computer club. They are pretty amazing people too. I found them through the APCUG, the national registery for computer clubs. Find the city you need and give them a call. You will find new friends willing to help.
Thanks a million!Helped more than anything else.I already started thinking it’s a physical damage of dvd drive. You brightened my day!!
thanks for ur usefull infos.
my notebook is an ACER Aspire 4920, i just bought it for 3 months,
in the registry editor i only found Lower class, and i deleted and restarted.
but it cant read!
the rom can show used and free diskspace of the cd/dvd, that means it can read, but when clicking it shows a blanc disc.
please give any idea.
lol.
I cant wait to try this. Im at my office right now and I work off of Windows 2000 and never have problems. But my home computer is only 7 months old and has Vista and I lost my cd rom over 4 months ago. Which really sucks because I have two teenage sons that have ipods and mp3 players and digital cameras that have to have the cd installed to use the product. I pray it works for me.
I have installed Vista Ultimate on my newly-built PC, 32 bit, and the DVD-ROMs work FINE while in DOS, but once Vista loads, they don’t exist!
The reg fix and the cdgone fix do NOT work.
Your fix worked straight away and now i have my dvd drive back. I did notice when i rebooted my laptop, the program that is Quick Time said that there was something missing from it. What i was wondering is could there be a driver issue with this program on vista. Anyway many thanks and all the best
There is an easy solution for this issue:
Create a folder named ERDATA on the D: drive.
Click on the START button, select COMPUTER, double click on the D: drive, click on FILE, select NEW then FOLDER, name the new folder ERDATA, then run the eRecovery application again and it should work.
The reason you need to do this that the system has to buffer the image somewhere and that path is to D:\ERDATA.
Happy Computing!
this worked for me. I’m using Windows Vista Ultimate. Awesome, man! Thanks!
Hi, I’ve had this problem before, followed the advice to clear the values in my Regedit and it worked fine.
But it’s happened again and this time when I go into my Regedit the appropriate folder doesn’t have the UpperFilters or LowerFilters anymore.
I’m not sure why they’ve disappeared to but it means that I can’t delete any values and my dvd-rw drive just won’t read any discs.
I’m running Windows Vista Home Premium.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers guys
AP
Ok… I rebooted my pc (obvious thing to do in hindsight!) and now it works. Problem resolved! I’ll try the simple fixes before panicking next time…
Peace out
AP
Installing itunes along with quicktime killed my dvd/cd rom. removing the software gets my drive back. using the regedit as suggested did not correct the problem. i also changed the drive letter to T with but still no better. Thanks
Worked fine!! A big cheers!!
I wrote before, the regedit fixing was not working,
now I have tried TK’s formula changing ERDATA, now it’s working smpoothly!
Thanks to everybody for nice sharing, and special thanx for TK for that idea.
cheers!
OMG it worked! my comp did the same thing.
Thank you so much it works perfect…! Thank God I found your instructions… Thank you thank you…!
Same issues as most others, delete upper and lower filters gives me access to my DVD/CD Rom again, however, itunes will cannot find my “recording software.” SO, I can purchase songs, but I cannot burn the playlists to cd’s. (rather annoying!)
Each time I open itunes, it stats that I missing some functions and that I need to reinstall, so I tried that and once again I have upper and lower filters…
Is this an itunes issues??? a Vista issue???
Does purchasing a new DVD/CD RW drive help???
PLEASE HELP!
Hi There,
My DVD drive also disappeared after working normally for a few days (new laptop running Vista home Prem.) and it does not show up in my computer or device manager at all. I did System Restore twice, which fixed the problem, but the third time I tried System Restore did not bring back my drive. I tried the regedit fix listed here, deleted upper and lower filters, didn’t work. I also tried deleting a windows update that some said had caused DVD drive problems, but it didn’t help either. I tried putting the computer to sleep and waking it up again (recommended on another site) and it didn’t help either. I actually tried to use the restore disc to re-install Vista, but the computer wouldn’t read that drive and it just booted normally. Shouldn’t it have booted from that disc? I checked my BIOS and it only shows my SATA hard drive listed, and says “none” for my IDE drive. I do not have itunes and I have not installed any software. Does BIOS recognize an optical drive? I read on another page that it doesn’t but I don’t know where else to look. If it was a bad drive or loose connection, System Restore would not have fixed it the first two times, would it?
I am ready to take it back to the store, I am assuming that it has at least a 30 manufacturers warranty and I’m still within that range. But I am very frustrated that I have a brand new, broken laptop. Could it be a software glitch that was coincidentally followed by a bad drive? Seems unlikely.
I hope someone can help! If I do get this fixed I think I will downgrade to XP for now.
Thanks! Let me know if you need any other info!
i love you man, i went out and brought a new dvd player for my computer i could not find my old one. Anyway i was might pissed the my new liteon 20x dvd rw would not work. i tryed everthing went there web site downloaded everthing the i went on to yahoo typed “fix my computer vista 64bit found nothing on the first page but the second i read about missing dvd followed you instructions once i concentrated and read what you wrote and first time it work.
Many thanks keep up the good work
Will
xxxxx
Thanks Ryan,
The reg hack worked on an HP Pavillion DV6207TX with a
DVD drive Windows Vista Home Premium Edition calls a “TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632 ATA Device”
Thanks again for helping another one of us!
Cheers,
Chris
THANKS A LOT!!!
My drive has been out for months, I tried loads of things and this finally did it. Word of advice for everyone out there
VISTA IS RUBBISH
It doesn’t work with a variety of programs and the amount of problems is huge. Stick with XP
THANKS FOR THIS RECOMENDATION, IT WORKS.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
I have bought a laptop HP TDV9417CL less than two weeks ago, running with Vista. The problem is that the SSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632M does not read any CD: not Audio CD, not installation CD (I tried to install the software for my digital camera), not picture CD. But it reads DVD and even more, it writes DVDs (Vista Recovery Disks).
The drivers are the latest recommended by HP.
If you have any suggestion, please help!
I am also thinking of installing XP instead of Vista, if necessary.
hey hey hey I’d give u 10 thumbs up if i had it cause that regedit stuff really work. u r a genius. thank u thank you in a million.
Guys i bought a new mnotherboard. once i connected all the cables the red light was on. i couldn’t able to figure out the mistake.
All cables are connected properly but when i press power button nothing happens.
any suggestions?
Thanks very much man, i have been looking for this answer a long time. I have been spending hours to find the problem. I wanted to send my laptop back for repair. Does anybody know what has causes this problem?
Microsoft… wakeup!! Where is the fix ??
Kind greetings, Gerard (The Netherlands)
Toshiba laptop, windows vista home. won’t play CD/DVD but used to. Does light up and spin and goes through the motions but cannot seem to burn or read? have tried the regit process am I doing something wrong?
The machine came preloaded all I have is the update CD for more expensive Vista products.
Not totally a IT competeant person but can follow through step by step procedures. Any help or advice really appreciated
Matt
had the same problem as the rest of you but had the “upperfilters” only and had it deleted and restarted like what you said, with my eyes closed and fingers crossed. hehe. anyway.. IT WORKED! my dvd drive is back! you are really a genius! a life saver! a monument should be built for you or something. you have really helped a lot of people with this solution. thanks a million times! God bless you!
i cannot find the lower filter and uper filter i click the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
im using acer 4520 vista premeium, my problem is after installing gears of war my dvd-rw doesnt read anymore but i can detect it and see it in my computer, i followed your instruction and i already found the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and found only the upper limit and deleted it and restart my computer but it doesnt work.
can anybody help me why doesnt it read anymore, this is the second time, the first time is i defrag my computer but it work but now it doesnt.
I am having the opposite problem with Vista Ultim.
I keep getting extra DVD drives. How do I get rid of these???
Thanks
hi,
thanks a lot.ve tried all my best to restore my cd/dvd drive back since but it didn’t work out.until i tried ur scope,infact you are too great………………!thanks
SP4,
IF you are showing extra drives and they are not just listing for external drives that you use, simply use the Add and Remove options in the control panel. Then remove them. That is a lot easier than trying to find one.
Jay,
If you bought a motherboard did you check to see if it is compatable with SATA drives and the type of memory that you have. Also check if the Ram is seated securely, that causes a non-start. If your computer was not plugged in for a time the battery may be low or gone. That too causes a launch failure. Did you format the hard drive before loading the OS? Check the documention on your motherboard.It might not be able to run your OS if it is a Mac or old and you are using Windows Vista. It may not have the proper horses to do the job especially if you bought it at a cut-rate price.
Yes, I bout an HP Computer and after 3 months my DVD Burner Drive was missing I followed you steps and iI got it back. Thanks!!!
Hey. I think it’s great that you have helped so many people but I have a problem! There is NO HKLM. I’m really not that great with programming and all but I have an Acer Aspire 5920, if that helps. When I go into regedit, It shows me
-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
-HKEY_CURRENT_USER
-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
-HKEY_USERS
-HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG
Mind helping me out and telling me how to access the Drive on the UNDER A WEEK OLD COMPUTER.
Shocking, huh?
OMG thanks so much! i have had so much problem until i read ur instructions!
It sure works, I’ve been looking for a fix for two weeks. Thanks you’ve prevented a heart attack.
I think I just found another solution for some people. On my Toshiba U205, setting the Power Managment to Power Saver will make the DVD/CD Rom Drive disapear. Setting back to Balanced or Perfomance will restore the DVD/CD to normal operation.
Can you belive Toshiba Tech support did not know that. They have replaced the main board and two Optical drives in this computer with out figuring out what was wrong with it.
Joel
Joel
That was a great observation. The simple stuff gets you every time.
Rhe_lo, I think you have to go to H KEY_local machine_ to get to the next step to find the filters. It is a bummer that it is happening to new machines and this needs to be addressed by the industry.
can anyone help me with my acer 4520 os is vista premium at first i can read the dvd (gears of war installer) after it fails to install . my dvd ram doesnt read anymore what is the problem, i encounter this twice already but with differen disk.
Your the bomb. I have only had this PC for a few weeks and I did not want to take it back to Best Buy for them to check out. After your instructions now it works perfectly. Thanks so much, Les
Hi,
I’m using Vista Ultimate, and I have NO upper, or lower filter in the regkey…
I’m using my Asus notebook, after an hour, a day or a week, my DVD-drive is disappear. The only solution is restart the Vista…
Any ideas?
THX
Hi Ryan,
Your advice works! Bravo, thank you very much.
The solution is brilliant!
Why do upper and lower filters create such problem? Hope you can share some knowledge, thanks.
Wilson
This solution worked great.
This is just a repost from up above.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:
1. Click on the start menu.
2. If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.
After 4 months of trying everything tried this tonight. It worked thus reducing this nag factor from the missus, it was her computer running microcrap vista
Hi im on vista basic and i tried what you had told me and it still didnt work.
Do you have anymore advice or will i have to upgrade to vista premium or one of the others?
Any help would be great thanks as im about to throw my laptop through the window,=.
finding cd dvd drive worked for me thanks
Okay, i’ve tried regedit, but when I search, nothing comes up. I don’t know what to do, and I’m not to computer savvy, but I’ve tried everything I could think of and also tried several of the answers listed here. I’m running Vista Ultimate on a laptop. Any suggestions as to what I may be doing wrong?
I just want to say thanks!! I know where i’ll come next time!!! Bloody Vista!
Thanks alot. this has happened to me twice on my new hp. Since it was on warrenty I took it in and they fixed right away but would’t say how. Took advice about regedit. Great Great only had upper, but worked anyway.
Thanks a bunch! I’ve been looking for a solution to my laptop’s problem for over 2 months (the exact same time in which I bought it!)
ok Idelet my computers cd and dvd romm. how i cna return back to computer
HI all,
i JUST BUY NEW LAPROP ACER ASPIRE 4720g with window vista os. Then I downgrade it to XP pro because vista cannot accept my technical software ( recomendation from acer engineer).Now i facing my CD/DVD cannot burn. Using CD/DVD HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA -T 20 N.
please helpe on this…………….
This worked for me. Thanks!
Deleting filters solution works very well. Compaq Presario V3418LA. Thank you
no upper or lower key.
no drives.
no happy microsoft.
Pedro The Swift,
It is filters you are looking for, not keys. You probably didn’t go far enough in the instructions. make yourself a copy. Do them again and go slow. Click each recommend item to access more data, then look carefully for the next group of items. IF this doen’t work there are other instructions you can try in this Random Fix list. Try those. Remember to do a cold restart of your computer. In otherwords turn it off and then wait 2 minutes and start it again when you finish a set. Good Luck
Ferst,
Wow that was a bummer. Try to do a plug and play. Go to control panel,Add hardwear, type in what ever the drive name you had and see if the computer will pick it up. Otherwise try going inside and unplugging it all( CD/DVD),Restart, shutdown, then reinstall drives,makeing sure your cables are all pluged into the Powersupply and proper ports. Go load any new drivers if your CD/DVD appears. I hope this will work but I never deleted a drive and tried to recover it.
i tried it all, but i cant still see my dvd rom drive but it cannot read.
MHV,
The only other thing I can think of is go to the BIOs and get into the Boot Menu,Probably F1 or F2 when starting the machine, depending on the brand of the machine. Disable, not delete, using /- ,the drive and then re-enable it. Make that drive 1st choise if you don’t have a floppy on your machine. The order then reads: CD/DVD, Removable,and C drive. Hopefully this will make the machine “see” the drive and reset its ability to read. IF no go, then swap the drive with a known good one and check if it is a drive problem. Replace if necessary.
I contacted Acer tech support on the end user tech line 800-816-2237. This is for U.S. residents. A support rep (female & very knowledgeable..friendly…spoke english..lol) helped me solve this problem in less than 5 minutes…sort of. She directed me to regedit to delete upper and lower filter in the following registry line. Again, an Acer support tech TOLD me this specific line for an Acer Aspire 5100. I am not sure if this will work for other Acer’s. I would recommend calling them. It may vary depending on model. The rep did not specify.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
I did have one issue so far about 5 minutes after that. My dvd/cd rom again vanished from “My computer”. I went back to device manager, clicked on just one item in the list and scanned for hardware changes. The drive came back. This is alot better than it not coming up at all for 2 months. I hope this helps out some fellow Acer Users.
Thank u dude!!!!
With me works very fine!!!!
But I have a doubt, how did you discovery this key???
[]s
This worked perfectly. You da man!! (or woman)
Today I tried to burn music to a blank disc. It told me in install a burner..i clicked on “rip” to investigate and it revealed i needed to install a cd drive…I was so hacked off! xmas eve and apparently no cd drive!!
i cant find it anywhere..even my shortcut says that it wont work..that something or other is unavaiable. I assume the cd drive is missinf simply from what Windows Media Player says…
I have an advent Laptop with windows vista…and i havent a clue what to do..
i have tried to search for regedit..but it came up with no hits…
looks like im off to PC World on boxing day to kick some arse. vista has given me a headache for 6 months…since the day i bought it!!!!
Im so upset about this…
Lauren,
Don’t panic Go to the top of this computer help site. There are all sorts of things you can try. The simplest is forget Media Player. Go to Start and click on it and see if the drive is listed in ‘Computer’. If it is shut down and restart your computer and see if that clears it up. If not go to the top of this page and start reading the instutions for the regedit. That actually stands for register edit that is why your search couldn’t find it. It is an action not a file. It is scary but not impossible just be careful to get the right key and filters. Go slow and double check everything. Print out the instructions so you can follow them.
thanks for your help.
I have since found out that it IS code 39 error, exactly the same porblem..and also the same thing my friend had some months ago with her own laptop. She had hers sent off to fix it as she didnt know how to at the time.
I’m going to go bug Curry’s after boxing day and get them to dare delete stuff cause i’ll end up wiping my harddrive knowing me!!!
Thanks for all your help. This is a great site. I hate Vista so much, I still have my issues with them cause my laptop keeps shutting itself down at random moments.
Im gonna attempt to complain about this issue as I think it’s ridiculous that so many people have had the inconvenience with their cd/dvd drives!!!! Complete madness!!!
Merry Christmas by the way!!! The irony of that sentence…
wow, a big thanks to admin for your helpful tip, i got my dvd back after trying so many way…event uninstalled and reinstalled the driver…thanks again…merry xmas!!!
Dear admin, followed your advise and it worked a treat. You saved my other half from going insane. Both his CD and DVD drive disappeared and he was just going to re-install XP back (I got him an upgrade to Vista and it drives him nuts…he hates it
).
I told him I will have a go before he re-installs everything and hey presto – both drives are back. Lots of work (and nerves) saved thanks to you!
Thank you thank you thank you
B.
Hi
Daughter had new Acer 5315 laptop Christmas day by Boxing Day no DVD.
Tried two system restores but would not accept restore points after trying.
Finally resolved with system restore from safe mode.
Loaded what little I had put on before – Star Office 8 (& patches), Page Plus 8, Sims 2 and WebCam software and driver nil else. Shut down and went to work – daughter rang to say can’t read drive again.
Will try fix tonight using your method to see how it goes (fingers crossed).
Failing that its another system restore then install one thing at a time to see what (if anything) causes it.
BTW the laptop came with no disks at all. How do I create some sort of restore disk?
I would have brought my PC to a repair shop if I didn’t find this page! Many many thanks to you!
One thing to add about this fix. I tried it as well, deleted the upper and lower filters, still no DVD player. I have a Gateway Laptop. Even after re-starting my DVD was still missing. Then I actually physically un-installed and re-installed the drive. It was simply a matter of taking out one tiny screw in the bottom and sliding the drive out, and then sliding it back in. I peeked into the drive bay and could see the port where it plugged in, it was as simple as plugging it back into an external port. Then I held it firmly in place while I re-installed the screw. I powered up the computer and my drive was back! It disappeared once more after that and I went through the process again, but since then I have turned it off and on several times, installed software, and even burned a disk and it is still there. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but so far it has been working! Oh, by the way, un-installing and re-installing the drive was a simple one-screw operation that did not involve cracking the case or exposing the motherboard, no tell-tale sticker or anything that would void the warranty. Hopefully your computer is the same.
Tried it … and it worked.
Cheers mate.
Youngest daughter has now stopped accusing me of messing up her new computer.
The posted solution didn’t work for me.
Just as described by so many other people,
1. My DVDROM has gone missing
2. it does NOT appear in Device Manager at all.
3. Most importantly, the *Filters registry keys are NOT present.
Just to reiterate my experience with my Toshiba Satellite running Vista. The default settings for the “Power Saver” mode, shut down the optical drive. Changing from “Power Saver” to “Balanced” or “High Performance” would bring the optical drive back. If this works for you, you can change the settings in the “Power Saver” mode so that the optical drive stays on (I think they are under an advanced tab). I have done this, and don’t see a significant change in battery life.
The odd thing about this is that the Toshiba Technical Support, and the Tech who replace the main board and two optical drives did not know about these settings. I don’t know if they are specific to Toshiba, or all Vista Laptops.
Hi.
Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately this fix didn’t work. This has been driving me mad for soo long. I have tried any and all suggestions. The Motherhboard has been replaced. The CD drive itself has been replaced. I only had the upper filters so I deleted those. Still the same problem. I reinstalled the drive. I’ve uninstalled Nero.
I’m not sure if my problem is the same as everyone elses. So I will give you my expereiences. The CD drive will do one of two things. Either it will completely forget how to read CD’s at all, or it will claim that the device is not connected. Just before it does this the pc will lock, and if I am playing any audio file (mp3 form harddisk or otherwise) this will get loop for a few minutes (just repeating the same 1 second of sound) and when I look in the event viewer after I get lots and lots of messages saying event id 15 which says The device, \Device\CdRom0, is not ready for access yet.
After that the only way to get it back is to reboot. I have frankly given up all hope of ever fixing this. Call this a last resort.
I have Vista Home Premium and my DVD drive is missing. I know it works because it will periodically allow me to install something and then sometimes right after it’s done it will tell me there’s no CD drive.
I deleted the correct upper/lower filters, then restarted, nothing. I uninstalled the disk drive and restarted and the drive was reinstalled and still, nothing.
Help, please!
I discovered an intersting cause for my particular problem
My DVDROM seems to behave fine UNLESS I put a writable DVD disc in the drive.
If I put commercially-printed discs in the drive, it’s fine. The second I put in a disc that has data I burned to it myself, the DVDROM goes away and stays gone until I put a manufactured disk in. Then it appears right away.
I can’t see how this information helps anyone. It certainly doesn’t help me if I want to use my DVD-RW drive AS a DVD-RW drive.
Have an HP Pavillion dv6000 with Vista home premium…CD/DVD drive worked perfectly since I got it back in March. Woke up today and there was no drive, don’t even have a cd/dvd drive listed in the device manager. Tried the regedit trick but I only have lower filters available, then tried a factory restore, then took out the cd/dvd drive completely and put it back in. All to no avail. (HP recommended doing everything listed as well)now HP is sending me a new cd/dvd drive…Hopefully this will work
I spent a good chunk of money on a new hp pavillion 9700 laptop – imagine my horror when the first day I receive it, the dvd drive works for 5 minutes and then disappears mysteriously (I was trying to install a new microsoft bluetooth mouse). Calling hp tech support, I spent two hours on the phone with a nice lady in the philippines named ace who suggested to delete the upper and lower filters – problem in my situation is there are none.
Did you by any chance change your power managnement, or go from 120 v to battery.
I haven’t figured out whether the power management issues are unique to Toshiba, or if they cover all windows Vista.
See my previous post for more info.
I’ve been running Vista on a Toshiba Satellite A200 for a while with few problems (Windows-wise, anyways) when all of the sudden my drive was lost. The first solution worked great. Thanks so much!
Thank you sir…I’m glad I used Google before doing anything rash. You are appreciated more than you know. You are even worthy of not working for Microsoft. Thanks again.
Joshua.
i still cant read any cd’s or dvd’s
the error says “Insert a disc Please Insert a disc into drive F:”
Excellent work! Thank you so much!
drive f??? thats not good.
Anyway I had the kind People at Currys talk me through deleting those troublesome filters and re-installing the drivers. It’s fixed my problem, and I’d just like to say THANKYOU SO MUCH!!! I was surprised in the least that they actually knew about this problem, so maybe there is hope yet other than desperately resorting to finding very kind people such as yourself to help us out! Hopefully one day soon Vista wont be such a pain for us all!!!
ooo…thx !
your regedit solution solved my problem !
respect !
Hi i tried ” regedit” solution but i still have the same problem running vista home edition. When i try to open my dvd its create a message “application not found”
Found only the ‘lower filter’ and deleting that fixed the problem. Many thanks to you guy’s for your help. Got a laptop from the family for Christmas and have never used ‘Vista’ before. Have I many more bug’s to face?
Worked a treat, I only had the lowerfilter listed. Vista Home Premium on a HP Pavilion dv6275us. Thanks for sharing.
Both upper and lower filters were listed and deleted, thanks alot for the help.
Thanks a ton for this thread! I am running Vista Ultimate 64, my dvd drive, as well as the flash portion of my pctv hd ultimate stick vanished, I could not get them back, tried everything I could think of. This did the trick.
THANK YOU! =)
That worked like a charm. Thanks for the post, it saved me a trip to the repair shop.
thanks the info worked great
Thanks for this – whoever you are, admin, I love you.
hi frd,,
my laptop is toshiba a135-s4677 same probelm occur with my system that is cd/dvs drive missing 2 months back .
i can get a solution till now so please help me how can i get back my driveeee…plz help me
Hi i was just wondering is there a permanent fix for this? I tried it and when i restarted my computer it worked and i was so happy. After a couple of days my CD drive went missing again and i am wondering why. I can delete the upper filer key in the registry, but it is repetitive,so i just want to know if there is a permanent fix.
Thanks!
I had the same problem with acer aspire 5100, computer did not recognize the cd dvd drive. The drive just pulls out (no screws) I pulled the drive out, plugged it back in and rebooted. PROBLEM FIXED!!
THANKS GOD FOR SMART PEOPLE LIKE YOU…YOU ARE A GENIUS…SAVED ME A LOT OF FRUSTRATION. THANKS AGAIN.
THANKS GOD FOR SMART PEOPLE LIKE YOU…YOU ARE A GENIUS…SAVED ME A LOT OF FRUSTRATION. THANKS AGAIN.
Ok i managed to get my dvdrom drive recognised but for some reason i still get the dam box popping up asking for the driver when i reboot??
It asks me to install a driver for the device so i click dont ask me again for this device then my drive vanishes once again.
I got the Asus G2S w/ vista home premium in august 2007 and it was awesome… then the dvd drive just stopped working one day (no resets or major changes to blame). It was still in the device manager but windows could not load the driver b/c it was corrupted or missing. The most recent driver was installed. Deleting the upperfilter and lowerfilter worked perfectly. I restarted and opened itunes; got message saying the registry values used to import cd’s were missing and to reinstall itunes. I didn’t and it still imported a cd fine(192kbps mp3 format)
THANKS!!!
This works for any kind of windows program…
I deleted only the “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” and restarted my pc…and IT WORKED!
THANKS AGAIN!!!
During mid-2007, I purchased an Acer Aspire 5100-3357. The CD/DVD player ceased functioning, as follows: Upon inserting a CD or DVD, the drive light would flash briefly and the drive would be making usual operating sounds, but then go dead. I first tried Ryan’s random fix.com reg-edit solution posted above but that did not solve the problem. The Device Manager would not show the presence of the device. As Kevin E noted above on 1/10/08, the $entire CD/DVD player unit (Panasonic) is not screwed into the Acer/Aspire computer frame but is merely press-fit onto a multi-pin male/female computer connection. It turns out that my problem with the disappearing CD/DVD player is because the unit was only partially press-fit into the computer–enough to connect the power supply but not all of the pins–and it wasn’t obvious from visual observation that the player unit wasn’t fully seated. When I firmly pushed the entire CD/DVD player unit into the computer, that fully seated all the pins and upon reboot, everything again worked fine.
Checked my registry, no keys labeled “lower filter”/”upper filter” exist on my vista machine.
Tough luck I guess.
Same here. Vista Ultimate. Drive appears but can only read. Won’t burn DVDs or CD’s. Works fine when connected to XP box. No upper or lower filters in reg. I am going back to XP on new box.
That worked for me deleting the filters then I just disabled and re-enabled my cd/dvd drive and it works fine now. THANKS!
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!
The registry fix worked perfectly.
For others info, machine is HP DV9500 with Vista Home Premium on AMD Turion. I had 2 registry entries, LowerFilters and LowerFilters.Bak which I removed and now the DVD drive is shown on the list of system drives and is working.
It had been working perfectly up until recently and the last thing I installed that _could_ have made changes was Real Player.
Hi i have the same problem whith my computer i have ACER -Aspire 5610 and the CD-DVD is (TSST corp cd/dvdw ts-l632d ATA device) and it’s not working after I instol the iTunes.
so is that the problem.
Hi, Having the same problem as everybody, however for some reason i cannot find the registry codes. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
THANKS!
Hi,
I had the same problem and after using the fix described above everything works again.
Thanks a lot!!!
RJL,
you may not find the registery entries because you didn’t click on each section in the insturctions. Review the insturctions and click on each section being careful to get the right ones in the correct series of steps. Hopefully you will then find the appropriate filters to delete and your system will work.
Hi,
I found the LowerFilter, but did not find the UpperFilter. I deleted the Lower Filter. But it did not work. But I saw an UpperFilter under the key:
{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
But I was not sure if I can delete it.
Can some one guide please.
So, is there any successful way to have vista and itunes? If not what is the next step in holding the industry accountable for providing a fix? Is Microsoft trying to launch a counter to itunes and has therefore sabotaged itunes applications on windows os? Of course I’m just paranoid…right?
The fix you provided worked like a charm… once! But the problem just came back a couple of weeks later. This time there were no more lower/upperfilters to delete. After a lot of trial and error, I decided to unistall iTunes (which was the only thing I remembered upgrading bot times I had the problem) and, voilá, cd/dvd drives are back! Now I just have to figure out a way to make ITunes and Vista Ultima coexist.
Excellent. It worked fine. Both the CD/DVD drives are working ok now. Thanks very much for the information.
I’ve had the same problem and have corrected it using the suggestion above. But, the problem returns again and again every once in a while, like every 2 weeks. It gets a little frustrating. I’m not really sure why this gets tripped every now and then. Any ideas? Will there every be a permanant solution. I did send a message to Microsoft, and got the obligatory patronizing email, without any comment about the problem.
Ray Naylor
Wow, your advice worked perfectly! Thanks a BUNCH!!!
I’m sure Pyro5 uninstall took the CD ROM drive edit with it. Damn Bill Gates!
I installed itunes on windows vista and after i would restart my computer my dvd drive would go missing, but after i followed the steps you layed out it works perfectly! so good advice. nice work.
thanks! I had a samsung laptop that had this problem. I tried to uninstall the drive and the ide channel then reboot, but this did not fix the problem.
When i read your website and did the regedit deletions, it now works!!!
many thanks.
wow this realy worked! thank you so much!
Had the same problem with a Toshiba P105. Several months with no DVD drive. I have been using an external as I have been too busy to take it to get it serviced. I tried the upper and lower keys Microsoft fix ect, nothing worked. Then suddenly this week my drive is back?????
I recently did a regular VISTA update.
Could it be Microsoft has fixed this via an update? Anyone heard any news?
Ya, I am assuming u are right Jim. I had went through and updated Itunes afraid I was gonna lose my drive again, but turns out, Microsoft had to have updated something! =p Now if itunes’ store would just let me buy someting now. lol
I went through the registry, and i was unable to find the upperfilter or lowerfilter in “4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318″ can you please help me.
Yes it worked for me with my Vesta Untimate.
Thanks
HI,
Still having problems for some magical reason. Updated Itunes,removed upper filters, countless of restarts and still nothing. Any other suggestions?
Thanks!
Connected to my big screen and installed a game controller then went to run my game and drive was gone. Except this time as soon as I removed the PC from the Big Screen via VGA and took out G4 controller drive came back. First time it has come back on its own and now seems to be related to connecting either the TV or controller. What a mess. It is for this reason I will never buy a Windows Machine again. I am going to go Apple on the next purchase, It will be worth the extra bucks.
I Ryan,
I had this problem on my drive till 2 months and this solution resolved it.
Many thanks,
Love
Myriam
i need more help! i found the upper and lower filters but when i go to delete them it says i cant delete all specified values…what do i do???
I tried it but when I hit delete and click yes, and after that it says it cant be deleted completely.
Compaq laptop (presario B1900). CD drives sometimes are there, sometimes not. If they arent there, need to shut down, and leave it off for a while it seems, then the drive MIGHT come back. Other times, doesnt show up for weeks. Wehn burning, usually stops halfway, or when copying from DVD will stop halfway and say folder doesnt exist. Deleted registry keys, same thing. Open to other suggestions.
Thanks,
Coop
Oh, running Vista Business by the way.
I can’t find any filters!!! Windows Vista Home Premium says “Hardware ID Missing”. What to do? I tried uninstalling dvd drivers and didn’t work. It happened after I put movie dvd and stupid windows media player tried to autorun the dvd and media player crashed. My computer is 3 months old and dvd worked few days ago. I don’t have itunes or that roxi program, whatever that is..
Cou,
If the computer is 3 months old I would take it back and tell the repair people about “hardware ID missing” and the Media Player crash. The computer is under contract for 1 year for parts and labor. Shouldn’t cost you anything to get it checked out and fixed. Make a list of all the things you have done like uninstalling the drives, and how it malfunctioned when playing movies, etc Take a copy of the regedit fix along with you and tell them to try it, or see if you have the latest Microsoft update seems to fix some computers.
Thanks, the fix worked.
egggggfvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
you gave me back my dvd drive. thank you very much. i almost gave up hope for this laptop, but you resurrected it to a full life. once again, you rule.
You rock! I have had such headaches over this computer the past 4 months. You gave me peace. You spelled it out so this average joe could do it!!!!
Worked! Have Vista 64 Ultimate, my sony aw-g170s was missing. I knew it worked fine – dual booted to server 2003 and burned a cd. removed the offending reg key and rebooted and viola!
Thanks for the fix. I searched everywhere thinking it was a driver problem.
I tried deleting the filters in regedit, didn’t help. However, I updated my itunes to the latest version and everything returned to normal. Go figure????
I am having problems with the filter thing. It seems like it happens everyday. Is there any other way to fix this. I have itunes, dell said it has something to do with itunes. Each day I have to delete the filters on my CD ROM drive and restart it and all that mess. Any help would be great.
Steven
logan6847@yahoo.com
you saved me alot of time money and hair (i didnt have to pull it out) and it was exactly what i was looking for. self help at its best!
I had the same trouble running vista ultimate, I tried the upper and lower filter solution and it worked perfectly……..thanks
Editing the registry fixed the problem. Thanks a lot!!!
Thank you so much for the regedit tip, both my DVD burners are back in service. I owe you!!!
Please help me! I have tried the fixes here, including the registry one, but I only had lower filters and nothing happened. My CD/DVD drive doesn’t come up at all so I have no way to do anything with it through device manager. Also, at startup the COMPAQ (i have a compaq presario v6000) screen comes up and my laptop will shut down and restart unless i fully eject the CD drive, at which point it will start up normally. I’ve tried disabling all startup apps but that has no effect. Any ideas? I would greatly appreciate any help!!
thank you so much for your tip, it worked.
the CD-ROM drive showed up again.
I tried this but it did not work. I have replaced both opticle drives and that did not work. I have reinstalled Vista twice now(first did not take) will try this today and see. Is it Vista? If so why doesnt Microsoft do something? I am seorisly thinking on abadoning Ultimater and buying XP. What good is state of the art if i can burn a dv or cd like a want to?
I installed Vista a while ago and I haven’t been able to use my CD/DVD drive for a LONG time! THANK YOU SO MUCH! You have no idea but you just saved me from spending $800 on a new laptop! THANK YOU!!!!
Hi There… I’ve had to different pcs with the same issue. The first was one that I built so i figured ‘okay, i did something to it and that’s why it’s not working…’ but the second i purchased from HP. The drive worked fine for about six months and now it’s vanished. I contacted tech support today after trying all the fixes I could find online and they recommended doing a system recovery. Well, I did that and it’s still not working. They want me to send in the pc for repair as they think it’s a drive issue. It’s just odd to me that I have two totally different pcs (both running vista though) that are having the same issue. Does anyone have any suggestions other than sending it in for repair? Thanks so much
kevin
Have you tried the regedit fix at the top of this web site? Follow the instructions about removing the upper and lower filters. This works for some of the PCs. You may be able to use it on both of your systems. Give it a try. Just be careful to precisely follow the instuctions as there are simular keys in the registery. Be sure to get the right one.
Good luck and let us know how it came out.
Marc W,
I did try that. One one system, the drive shows up but regardless of what is put in the drive it doesn’t work. In fact, it locks up the computer until i eject the disc. The other, the drive still doesn’t show up but I just checked the bios on it and it’s not showing up there either. Not really sure where to go from here…
Kevin,
I am not sure where you go from here either. How about just going to control panel and add hardware since it doesn’t show up in the disk manager or in bios. Maybe it is completely out of the system. Maybe a simple add could cure the problem. Give it a try; sounds like you got nothing to lose by trying the obvious.
Good luck and keep us posted. If the administrator has any ideas now would be a good time. keep us posted
Gave up took my called Toshiba, still under waranty. They replaced my DVD. Two day turn around with a local shop. So far so good but I have not tried everything that caused it to disappear before. I expect another trip back to the shop, but so far so good.
If you are still under waranty its worth it to have them deal with the issue.
My SONY VAIO VGN-NR160E missing DVD-RW icon. DVD not work. No play, no rec.Help, please!
Hi there
the deletion of the two keys helped!!! my drive E: (dvd-rom) is back again! It just disappeared during the norton 360 installation… very strange… now my pc is back alive and kicking! the antivirus install each time generates troubles… without the 2 keys my drive is now back – GREAT stuff!!! many many thanks…. R
wow…thank you very much…worked like a dream
Hi, struggled to get this working but the registry fix and a complete shutdown got it going on my ACER 9420. Appeared to be a Vista update that stopped it working..thanx again saved my bacon with the work i was doing
Haven’t tried this fix yet, b/c not sure if this is what I need to do. I also have the Code 39 listed and the reason behind it is, b/c a friend decided to remove Roxio from my Sony Vaio. I have Vista too. I have tried to update the driver to see if that will fix it, but nothing. Because the Roxio was removed, will this still work? Thanks so much! :O)
The fix worked perfectly… My DVD drive came up missing right after i uninstalled Macafee antivirus. Don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but system restore would not fix the problem even though I restored back to a point before the last time I had installed software, which would indicate that the DVD drive was working back then. System restore doesn’t put EVERYTHING back like it was apparently.
ThAnk YoU vEry MucH.
I have had trouble with my CD/DVD Driver, too.
At first, I lost my driver by playing an unknown CD. It drove my bro-in-law crazy, so he immediately brought it to Best Buy where he bought it. The guys over there put a folder called CDrom Not Working containing a file double-shooting that matter, so I just double-click it and reboot the computer to get it done.
A relative who thinks he knows all once saw that folder on my desktop, suggested I didn’t need it and deleted it before I realized what he was doing!! I almost got mad and was swept away in tears.
Another guy came over my house to fix it up with other problems. I didn’t know how he worked with the driver so that when he was still at my home, the computer went well; he even laughed when know there was such a double-shooting file. But, few days after, the driver again stuck with the error code 10. It was about 3 months ago. I had tried to ignore, but since I really needed to install my studying software, I had to do something. And thank God to find you. ^^. Smiling up!!!
I too have lost my dvd drive after installing Itunes. This is the second time, so I am pretty certain that it was caused by the Itunes installation.
Another vista abnormality, is that Firefox was my default browser, but an automatic windows update changed my default to Internet explorer and it won’t release being the default browser. I make Firefox the default browser, but when I click on a link in Outlook Express, Internet explorer opens to the link I just click.
Quite annoying to be hijacked or controlled by Microsoft.
Thanks for your post!
It worked! YAY! Whoopee! Thanks so much! :O)
Latasha is*bowing lowly to the ground and repeatedly saying “I’m not worthy”*
It worked! YAY! Whoopee! Thanks so much! :O)
Latasha is *bowing lowly to the ground and repeatedly saying “I’m not worthy”*
It worked! YAY! Whoopee! Thanks so much! :O)
Latasha is bowing lowly to the ground and repeatedly saying “I’m not worthy”
sorry it was dropped three times. Having problems with internet
I had the CDrom lockup Vista problem and I solved it by going to controll panel and to device manager and click on IDE ATA controllers then click on IDE channel then advance tab and uncheck Enable DMA. It worked immediatlly. Hope this helps someone.
Len
re:Len Douglas
OMG! THAT WORKED!!!! It fixed BOTH of my drives! Thank you thank you thank you thank you! Where are you? I will so buy you a beer!
my dvd drive is missing help!
I had the “code 10″ message and after a bit of exploring, decided to remove iTunes before doing anything else too complicated.Problem solved .
I’m having a similar problem to all of yours except slightly different (running on vista ultimate btw)… My cd/dvd-rom drive shows up as being installed in device manager. When I insert a CD into the drive, it plays. When I insert a DVD (movie or game to be installed) it does not play the disc; rather it just sits in there and makes a series of beeping and busy noises (disk not spinning). I have updated my firmware and drivers and still nothing has fixed the problem. I called the company that I bought my PC from (ibuypower.com) and the service rep was awful… he had music blaring and people laughing in the background; he gave me a repair number and told me to ship it in for a replacement. I’m not sure if it needs a replacement or if it’s a problem elsewhere. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
I had the missing drives on Vista and couldn’t solve it, had to re-install Windows. But when it happened again I could not face the pain, luckily I just found your tip, tried it and it worked perfectly! Cannot believe all the updates issued by Microsoft have not addressed this problem. Many thanks for a saving my PC (and my sanity)
Tried your method. No filters shown so tried to delete the driver but Vista won’t let me??!!
Was playin a game through drive when it crashed
I for one am really disappointed in this POS Vista. I’m trying to fix my missing USB, CD, DVD and when i type REGEDIT into the search box, it says it cannot find anything, AM i missing something
Thanks for sharing the fix guys, worked great. Now I just have to work out how to do the same for my External USB DVD/RW!
umm..thanks a lot!, i was on d verge of doing a system restore!..but i havent checked out my itunes yet, kinda scared 2 after readin all those comments…but still thanks a bunch cus i’d have lost way more dan itunes..x
I got a brand new acer laptop 5630- i tried to connect my lexmark 645 printer to that. its not printing anything. when I installed the printer it gacve me the sample print out thats the only document i have ever printed. now its always saying ink is low but i got new catrege too. pls help me
Thanks. It worked now.
Jonath,
I would suggest that you check and see if you loaded the software disk from the printer and updated the software. That might help it work correctly. If not, Clean the heads of the cartridges with alcohal and a Q-tip or appropriate cleaner. Make sure the cable from the computer to the printer is firmly plugged in.
If you have to, Reload the printer into the computer via the Control Panel deleting the existing entry with the add/remove opitons.
Let us know how it goes.
Well I don’t have a problem with missing drives at all. It’s just when I purchased a new computer and wanted to load all of my previously saved data from my old computer, the drive listed the cds as being previously burnt before, by showing how much space was available, but when I open them, all I get is a “drag files for burning” option and nothing else. It won’t read any of the files on the disc and treats it as a blank disc.
Would this regedit solution work for this as well? I’d like to keep this new computer for a while and still be able to enjoy all my media.
The regedit tip worked great the first time but the 100 times it has happened since there was no upper or lower entries in the regedit. However, for some reason putting the laptop into sleep mode and waking it back up works every time. Needless to say we just bought another laptop and we went with an Mac. Nice work Vista!
Hi, someone please help, I do have the problem with my DVD VCD drive.This is to say when i insert my CD in mz drive, its not read it. Please help me I am using WINDOWS VISTA.
Thanks for the tip! I was ready to send my computer, only two weeks old, down to Texas for a fix… Thank you thank you thank you!!!
LIFESAVER!
cheers man
Thanks to you, I solved a problem that I had, that almost convicted me of owning two problematic DVD-RW Drives.
Thank you very much and, this web page has a place among my Favorites for future reference.
Greetings from Greece
Is there anyone out there that can please please help those of us who do not have upper filters to delete? Please!
Fan-freaking-tastic!!
wow thank you this had puzzled me for days and the fix worked perfect thank you
Brilliant. 1000 x thankyou!
As a computer ’systems’ novice after 8 months of frustration without a CD/DVD player, and the “experts” where we bought the PC actually replacing the drive, yet to no avail …… finially today in 5 mins with your help it all is fixed.
hope you’re getting a kickback for fixing Microsoft’s problems!
Well i’m a technical support for Acer’s company and i work for the French Q and sometimes for the English Q.I ussually receive a lot of calls from customers complaining about missing cd-rom in the computer.I always get very upset and frustrated when trying to resolve the issue.I keep uninstalling the cd driver on device manager and have customer restore the system.When issue can’t be resolved eu start cursing and get upset.I always scared not to receive any call about that issue.
Not lately i saw that website and i read it over and over.That same day i received three calls about missing cr-rom on unit.The first call i was afraid and had double on my mind.I began to put into practice about what i read on the website.Ten minutes later the issue was resolved.Yeah! Now i’m very confident and know how to deal with that issue.
Thanks God that you have been there to help.Hope you will be increased more in skills and wisdom.Thanks
Hope one of you can help me. I am reaching the end of my rope. I am unable to use my dve/cd drive. I have tried everything ….. including purchasing a new drive! I can see the drive in device manager and can sometimes see what is on the cd but it will not play. Have changed the registry, installed and uninstalled drivers and the drive itself and then purchased a new one. I installed the new drive over the weekend and it is doing the same thing. I can hear it spinning. I have spent hours on line with HP trying everything they told me to do. Thank you in advance.
I purchased my new computer @the end of Jan. I am now a student online. I had to purchase The ultimate steal program for my classes. This include many componets such as microsoft home and office 2007, power point 2007 and so on. I downloaded this yesterday and last night it took hours. I have the dialup server. Now i can not find it on my computer. Where should i look for this so i know it was installed correctly? Please help i am in a panic!!!! thank you, Kathy
hey. i followed the steps but cldnt find any filter programs! there were only these programs.
(default)
driverdate
driverdatedata
driverdesc
driverversion
infpath
infsection
matchingdeviceid and
providername
can anyone tell me what to do??
hey. i cant find the filter files! ther isnt any. and im using vista too
Had same problem and tried all the above. The one thing i didnt try that just work was the most obvious…
I reset the bios. I had not even looked in the bios to see if the DVD drive was showing doh. When i saw it wasnt i reset bios and all is well. May not help but you never know.
leon,
If you are unable to see any upper or lower filter then they do not exist and this may not be your problem.
You may be dealing with an actual hardware problem with your optical disk drive. If your computer is fairly new and still under warranty, I highly suggest to utilize that warranty and take it into an authorized service center to have it looked at.
Many thanks from little country Czech republic
My little brother had a same problem with this freaken VISTA message about missing DVD…He asked me for some HELP!!! 
First what I told him..wasn´t pretty…becaouse I haven´t any idea about this issue. But after few secs.(justfuckinggoogleit) I found your site 
with patching steps.
I exactly did the steps that you indicated and it works absolutely perfect. Thank you “CHLAPAKU” ((something like HERO in slang from czech language!!!
Thanks a lot!!! It solved my problem
Hey,i have i similar problem.
My buil-in dvd drive is missing from “my computer” (i have a lap top)
with XP.
When i turn on the laptop,the Acer screen comes up forced me to go to set up.And every time i must go exit-discarding changes to enter the windows.
Any ideas?
Thanks.
The advice worked.Thanks a lot.I had given up hope and planned to downgrade to XP but your advice has been a lifesaver.Even the computer(Dell) manufacturers help team were foxed.
Vista is full of compatibility problem until today, March 2008. The DVDRW and DVDrom stop to work after I download vista hotfix or update, yesterday. Never got this problem in vista before.
But this tips safe my life. Thx.
God Bless you people!
You make my life to be more easly!
Now it work!
Ive been pulling my hair out for ages over this problem and hoping Microsoft would do the decent thing. The world is a better place with you and people like you who are willing to help others and not just in it for the money. You’re a star and you’ve saved my last few hairs too
Such a simple thing to do and it works great. Thank you for making it available.
PLEASE SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE LISTED THIS BUT NO ONE HAS ANSWERED…………… i TRIED THE REGEDIT FIX BUT THERE ARE NO LOWER OR UPPER FILTER PLEASE HELP WHAT IS NEXT !!!
Pam,
I agree with Ryan that if your machine is under warrentee take it back. Update drivers. The other thoughts are make double sure that you are on the correct Hot Key. Another thought is the jumper pin on the back of the drive( between power & motherboard carble) is in the wrong place. Use in Master or Cable Slect position. Test both. Pictures of set up usually located on drive label or stamped on metel of drive.
It could be that your drive is just plain bad and needs replacement. It does happen. Test that drive in a friends computer first before you give up on it. There are sometimes compatability problems.Go to Microsoft Compatibility site. Check for loose wires and cables. Sometimes the drive, cables or connections aren’t seeded in properly, take out and put back in( corrosion happens)or a wire is broken in a cable. It is hard to see it sometimes. If you can find a spare cable try that and test it. I hope these options and suggestions help. It is a tricky problem. No fun at all.
All Computer Users,
There are computer clubs all over the country. They generally have spare parts and friends to help you with compter problems. You can find one near you by going to the website http://www.APCUG.org. What you save it tech support is worth a membership donation to your local group. I belong to my local club and get good information there. You also have a place to complain when something doesn’t work. Ideas flow from groups in that no one knows everything about everything.
Thanks for the info but my DVD drive disappears only when I install a new program if I restore to previous settings it comes back. I have taken my computer to the geeksquad 3 times and they have fixed it but yesterday I installed a mew program and it happened again, also it doesn’t happen until I restart my computer then the dvd drive is gone. Now I have a new problem……My fan will come on really loud and then my computer will just shut down and restart..
What a pain so I guess its another trip to the geeksquad.
Thanks for the info but my DVD drive disappears only when I install a new program if I restore to previous settings it comes back. I have taken my computer to the geeksquad 3 times and they have fixed it but yesterday I installed a mew program and it happened again, also it doesn’t happen until I restart my computer then the dvd drive is gone. Now I have a new problem……My fan will come on really loud and then my computer will just shut down and restart..
What a pain so I guess its another trip to the geeksquad.
thanks
Pam
Pam,
The fan problem is unrelated. It could be a wire,cable or loose material inside interfering with the fan. Or the fan is going bad. They don’t last forever. Anyway when a fan fails the temperature rises and the computer will shut down for its own protection. Heat, no matter its cause, is what shuts the computer down. You can fix it, go to Geek Squad or a friend that is good under the hood.
The other problem of the DVD loss when you put in a program is more serious. Your registery or download folder files sound like they are corrupted. I wonder, since it started on a certain date, if you picked up a virus. That is a real pain to get rid of it and reload the MS Operating System. If a virus you must find it and eleminate it before reloading. Even if you wipe the drive you may not get it all out depending on how it is designed. You need an expert other than Geek Squad.
Thank you so much for the fix. HP wanted me to wipe out my whole hard drive and reinstall everything. Could kiss you, Thank you so much.
Had total DVD drive read failure in Vista except for some random files showing but not opening or playing at all. Len Douglas is the man. One check box (only took me a few hours to find that post)!!! Was just about to get into the hardware as last resort. Could always see the drive, did the registry fix, then unchecked enable DMA like Len said. Problem solved. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Hi Administrator,
can you please help me…. i used to have Windows XP, but i upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate… and then my DVD-drive was not burning anything. So i followed the steps and i deleted the upper filter (lower filter was not there) and restarted computer. Then i uninstalled the DVD driver through going to device manager. Restarted the computer again, and the driver installed again succesfully. But now, the drive isnt even detecting anything. When i insert something into the drive, nothing happens, I checked computer.
I will be really grateful for help,
Thanks, Viven
all i have in that key thing is an upperfilter
i deleted the upper filter and restarted and i don’t think much happened
any ideas on what i should do next? i don’t wanna mess around and crash my computer
I have had the same problem and solved it by following the instruction.
But in my RegEdit, i did not have “UpperFilter”. I’ve only seen “Lowerfilter” which i deleted, and removed the drives (CD & DVD) from “Device manager” and restart windows vista ultimate. Both media drives came back. So this amazing instruction helped me solve my issues.
By the way, after reboot, i’ve checked Regedit and found that there is no more “UpperFilter” or “LowerFilter”. Is that ok? I’m just wondering.
Anyways, thanks to you guys who are sharing your precious knowledge.
Thanks for the tip. This resolved a problem I’ve been having on-and-off with my Acer Aspire 5100 for months. I appreciate the help.
yes it works thanks a lot you cured my headache
hi,
i have a toshiba satellite laptop on with vista. when i first got it, like many others, it worked perfectly fine, we watched dvds on it, but then suddenly, i’m not sure when, the d