Yesterday I lost my CD-DVD drive. Well, it seemed that way.
A friend loaned me a DVD with some chess material and when I put it in the drive it just whirred a few seconds and then went quiet. When I clicked on "This PC" (an icon on my Desktop) it showed the top levels of my file system and there was no optical drive in sight. OMG, what happened? Has it died?
I started up Device Manager and it wasn't listed there as an attached device. How could this calamity befall me now?
My next step, after the inevitable hot sweaty panic and the cooling down phase, was to go onto the Internet. Oh wait, that's not working either. What the heck is going on here?
Total freakout phase begins...
I restarted my PC and that didn't help, so I had to reboot the Wireless device, remove its battery, put it back together (not a long process) and then restart again. Thankfully that worked to make the wireless access point reboot and I had internet access again. Whew.
Thought the world was falling apart for a few minutes there.
So, as I was saying, I went onto the Internet and began to look for solutions to my optical drive problem. Time for another Trump-like digression? Did I mention the time? It was already closing in on midnight and I haven't been able to study for school. These problematic interventions aren't helpful. I went to Microsoft and HP (maker of my PC) and neither seemed terribly helpful, though I did learn HP also wants to intrude onto my PC with their Personal Assistant software and regular updates (of what I know not). Everybody wants to steal my computer and I don't mean the hackers.
Somewhere in my browsing I came across an article saying a few people had gone to their BIOS configuration program (reached at reboot/restart time by pressing a function key which your PC maker specified). This isn't necessary to fix the problem, but for those who are comfortable with this kind of thing it's helpful to realize your BIOS still recognizes the optical drive hardware is still there and in good working order. In fact, the main thing your BIOS software does at startup is to check your RAM, CPU, Keyboard and other things to see if you have a working computer and only after a few things like that does it begin to load the operating system (Win 7, Linux, etc.). Well, my PC's BIOS showed the optical drive was still there. Whew! Now, why wasn't the operating system (oh, wait Windows 10 is new) recognizing it.
A little more browsing and I found a Microsoft discussion forum with the answers.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-10-dvd-drive-missing/f246ef3d-ff9a-4cd2-9746-7de01184c258
Apparently there have been some other people who "lost" their CD/DVD drive after Windows 10 was installed. Why hadn't I thought of that? I had lost use of my printer right after Windows 10 was installed and just doing a device driver update solved that problem. The big difference was that my PC hadn't completely lost sight of the printer. Now my PC wasn't even recognizing there was hardware on my PC.
When I first read through the forum discussion I wasn't sure I could trust them. The answer seemed odd and I don't like messing with things which I'm not absolutely certain are broken. But, reading the discussion showed several people had tried the 'solution' and it had worked. Finally, the HP "help guy" also endorsed it as THE solution.
So, I did it and it worked immediately.
By now it was about 1:30am, but I was feeling like a weight had been lifted.
The solution was to go to Device Manager, click on the IDE/ATA Controllers list and uninstall the shorter ones. One by one and suddenly the OS says it's time to Restart your computer NOW. After the Restart the optical drive is back and working fine. Easy.
Is this the answer for all problems? No, but for this specific problem of the disappearing CD/DVD drive it worked like a charm.
Now back to studying.
A friend loaned me a DVD with some chess material and when I put it in the drive it just whirred a few seconds and then went quiet. When I clicked on "This PC" (an icon on my Desktop) it showed the top levels of my file system and there was no optical drive in sight. OMG, what happened? Has it died?
I started up Device Manager and it wasn't listed there as an attached device. How could this calamity befall me now?
My next step, after the inevitable hot sweaty panic and the cooling down phase, was to go onto the Internet. Oh wait, that's not working either. What the heck is going on here?
Total freakout phase begins...
I restarted my PC and that didn't help, so I had to reboot the Wireless device, remove its battery, put it back together (not a long process) and then restart again. Thankfully that worked to make the wireless access point reboot and I had internet access again. Whew.
Thought the world was falling apart for a few minutes there.
So, as I was saying, I went onto the Internet and began to look for solutions to my optical drive problem. Time for another Trump-like digression? Did I mention the time? It was already closing in on midnight and I haven't been able to study for school. These problematic interventions aren't helpful. I went to Microsoft and HP (maker of my PC) and neither seemed terribly helpful, though I did learn HP also wants to intrude onto my PC with their Personal Assistant software and regular updates (of what I know not). Everybody wants to steal my computer and I don't mean the hackers.
Somewhere in my browsing I came across an article saying a few people had gone to their BIOS configuration program (reached at reboot/restart time by pressing a function key which your PC maker specified). This isn't necessary to fix the problem, but for those who are comfortable with this kind of thing it's helpful to realize your BIOS still recognizes the optical drive hardware is still there and in good working order. In fact, the main thing your BIOS software does at startup is to check your RAM, CPU, Keyboard and other things to see if you have a working computer and only after a few things like that does it begin to load the operating system (Win 7, Linux, etc.). Well, my PC's BIOS showed the optical drive was still there. Whew! Now, why wasn't the operating system (oh, wait Windows 10 is new) recognizing it.
A little more browsing and I found a Microsoft discussion forum with the answers.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-10-dvd-drive-missing/f246ef3d-ff9a-4cd2-9746-7de01184c258
Apparently there have been some other people who "lost" their CD/DVD drive after Windows 10 was installed. Why hadn't I thought of that? I had lost use of my printer right after Windows 10 was installed and just doing a device driver update solved that problem. The big difference was that my PC hadn't completely lost sight of the printer. Now my PC wasn't even recognizing there was hardware on my PC.
When I first read through the forum discussion I wasn't sure I could trust them. The answer seemed odd and I don't like messing with things which I'm not absolutely certain are broken. But, reading the discussion showed several people had tried the 'solution' and it had worked. Finally, the HP "help guy" also endorsed it as THE solution.
So, I did it and it worked immediately.
By now it was about 1:30am, but I was feeling like a weight had been lifted.
The solution was to go to Device Manager, click on the IDE/ATA Controllers list and uninstall the shorter ones. One by one and suddenly the OS says it's time to Restart your computer NOW. After the Restart the optical drive is back and working fine. Easy.
Is this the answer for all problems? No, but for this specific problem of the disappearing CD/DVD drive it worked like a charm.
Now back to studying.
