Possible CD/DVD Drive "Fix"

[Bigaldoc]

I have a local friend who told me that her LAPTOP CD/DVD drive quit working. Well, I'm not well equipped with knowledge about such things and the few drivers, reconnect, etc. things I mentioned did no good.

She was pressed for time on a work project and thus bought an external which wouldn't work either.

Today she emailed and told me that she somehow Googled up a suggestion about corrupt "upper and lower" filters, for which she evidently used Regedit to fix. She hasn't sent me the link yet, but I did a bit of Googling and came up with these:

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs

Fix problems with CD or DVD drives that can’t read or write media

Does this ring any bells for anyone? Regardless, it might be good to leave this here in case someone else needs to try...

[DaveA]

Yes, it does ring a bell. I have used it on a few machines that had this problem. None of my machines, but others. I do not recall what the cause of this is, but the fix has worked for me.

[Bigaldoc]

Thanks, Dave - as it did for my friend. So, I suppose it'll be good to have this thread here in case anyone has CD/DVD trouble. It's an easy enough fix to try, as long as you're CAREFUL in Regedit. The keys in that part of the tree are LONG names and ya gotta be careful you get the right one!!!

[DaveA]

I have just used the "Fix It" link, as it does all the work for you.

[Argus]

Yes, Al, it does ring a bell.
I mentioned them briefly some months ago when discussing something else; in a thread about removing some CD/DVD burning software: Re: Roxio Burn. (The reason: Removing everything in the registry that mentions some software won't help if there are corrupt UpperFilters and/or LowerFilters entries, or entries that will not work with other software.)

As you mention it can happen that they become corrupt. I learnt about them back in 2001/2002 when XP came and I used a software similar to the one mentioned in the thread above, as well as other software (uninstalling and installing, if not done properly, can also create problems as mentioned in the KB article). Though I can't remember if I actually had any problems; if I helped someone else; or if it simply was part of a manual uninstall/cleanup process...

The 4d36e965... etc. is the GUID for the CD/DVD device class, and once found the rest is easy, but as you say, one should always be very careful when working in the registry.

It's definitely good to have this thread here, so I think it was good of you to mention it, with links to MSKB.

[Bigaldoc]

The 4d36e965... etc. is the GUID for the CD/DVD device class ...

That's a good link, Argus, thanks.

I got an email overnight from my friend and she found her tip at Yahoo, so I thought I'd add that link to this thread as well:

My computer won't recognize my CD or DVD drives. How do I fix this? - Yahoo! Answers