DVD/CD Drive D has disappeared

I am now unable to play any cd. I do not know what happened. I was putting new pictures on cds when drive D stopped working. It disappeared from My Computer. Drive E is still there, where I burn cd's, which I was not using. It runs, I can hear it , but game cds will not play. When I put a music cd in drive D, i tunes want to be the default player, I click no, I have always used Windows Media Player. These music cds have always played in Media Player before. Would a System Restore work? Fixed music cd problem. DVD RW Drive (F:) is playing cds now.

Edited by kazzmo (January 01, 2013 10:50 AM)

Assuming that the drive didn't give up the ghost, a restore may resolve it. You can also try removing it from Device Manager and rebooting. Windows will detect it and install the drivers.

If there are any hardware/driver issues, Device Manager will also list those.

InlandAZ, In Device Manager under DVD/CDiRom drives I have two listed and I do not know which one I should uninstall, they both offer that option.1-OptiarcDVD+-RWAD-5170s-ScSIcdRom Device 2. TSSTCorp CDRW DVD TS-H493B SCSI CdRom Device. Which one should I uninstall? I have had this happen before, but I do not remember how I got the D drive to reappear. Disc are working in F drive and I burned a disc just to make sure that everything, game disc, music disc and burning disc all work in this drive. I would like to have D drive back since that is the drive that has always preformed these functions. Please give me your advice.

I'm not sure I understand you. In your first post you say "Drive E is still there, where I burn cd's, which I was not using." So so you have 3 optical drives in this computer?

If drive D is the one that's giving you problems, try uninstalling that particular drive through Device Manager and reboot. This site has a screenshot on how to uninstall a DVD drive:

http://windows7themes.net/dvd-drive-slows-down-your-computer-in-windows-7.html

This looks like your "read" optical drive...



Try uninstalling that one first. When you boot back up, Windows will "see" the drive and reinstall it.

I'm working on a laptop for a friend and had the same thing happen yesterday. The optical drive just disappeared. After uninstalling it did not work, I did a System Restore and it reappeared and is doing fine again. So, if uninstalling it in your Device manager doesn't work, just do a System Restore.

Jenny100 and Draclvr, I have, Floppy Drive A,DVD/CDRW Drive E and DVDRW Drive F(which used to be Drive D)until it disappeared and removable Disk G,H,I and J. I do not remember what Drive F was before it took the place of Drive D. Draclvr, if I uninstall Device 2, will that make Drive F disappear since it has taken the place of Drive D? My three drives were A,D and E. Now they are A, E and F.

OK, now you have totally confused me. Are both your optical drives working, just with different drive letters assigned? If you put a disk into the DVDRW drive, does it show up?

G,H,I and J are probably a memory card reader.

Draclvr, Yes the disc shows up in Drive F, (which was Drive D). The disc reads and plays perfectly. Drive D disappeared and Drive F took it's place.

Oh, that's different... so the drive is OK? Somehow it just got assigned a different drive letter, right? Your drive D didn't disappear at all, it's just called something else.

Unless, I'm just confused again!

If Drive F "took the place of Drive D," it sounds like all that happened is that the drive changed its drive letter. You know which drive you put the disc in when it was D, right? It's the same drive that now shows up as F, right?

I'm going to assume that's what happened.

Here's how to set it back:

Click the Start button in the lower left of your Desktop. Type
diskmgmt.msc
in the Start Search. When it shows up at the top of the list, right-click the listing and choose to Run as Administrator. Enter your password to get permission to make changes.

The Disk Management tool looks something like this
http://totalpchealth.com/images/screens/articles/disk-management.gif

Yours will look a little different because you have a different size drive. You should also see more than one CD drive, though you may have to scroll down or maximize the window.

To change your CD drive letter, right-click where it says CD-ROM
(yours probably says something like
CD-ROM 0 DVD (F:) or
CD-ROM 1 DVD (F:)
Then choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths"
Then the Change button should let you select the drive letter you want.

By the way, if you install a CD emulation program like Daemon-Tools or Alcohol 52%, it will probably bump up your CD drive letters the next time you reboot. That's what happened back when I used Daemon-Tools in Windows 98 years ago. To create the virtual CD drive, it gives it the lowest drive letter that is not a hard drive letter.

Jenny100, I followed the instructions above, but when I click on CD-Rom 1 to change drive letter, D is not listed as an option.
Draclvr, Yes, that is right Drive D became Drive F.

Well, who knows what happened, but if both your drives are working and you can't rename it back to D, I would leave well enough alone.

Draclvr, Thank you, That is exactly what I will do. Thank all of you for your time and sharing of your knowledge. I appreciate it very much.

You haven't been running a virtual drive program like Daemon Tools have you?

If the drive letter D: is not available, something else is using it. It could be a program that emulates a CD drive besides doing something else. Some disc burning programs will also emulate a CD drive and reserve a drive letter -- not just programs like the Daemon-Tools and Alcohol programs I mentioned earlier, but even programs like Nero.

Mj2c and Jenny100, I have not used any of the above mentioned programs. I just simply transfered photos to disc and the drive letter changed. I do not have a clue. My burning program is Roxio, could D drive be there now?

Drive D may be assigned to another device, does it show up in the list at all?

Not sure what you mean by "there," but Roxio does have capability to create a virtual CD drive.
http://forums.support.roxio.com/topic/31981-how-to-creat-a-virtual-drive/

InlandAZ, In Disk Mangement, D does not appear in the list of optional drive letters.
Jenny100, By "there " I was refering to Roxio. Perhaps Roxio hijacked Drive D. I do not have the computer knowledge to know how to find where Drive D disappeared too. Drive F aeems to work fine, it is just frustrating to have Drive D there one minute and gone the next and have no clue as to what happened. To someone like me, with very limited computer knowledge, it is kind of scary to have things just disappear.

You have to understand that "drive D" did not disappear. What happened is that the drive letter D has somehow gotten assigned somewhere else - perhaps to your computer in an alternate time warp! No matter what driver letter is assigned to your optical drives, what matters is that they are working for you.

If a drive letter changing was the only issue I ever encountered, I would rejoice!

Draclvr, You are so right. I can certainly live with this minor change. It just baffles me! I may never where D went, but F works just as well. So all is well!

It may be assigned to a hidden partition, you should see it in the list of drives (in the lower pane).

InlandAZ, I do not know where the "lower Pane" you are referring to is located.

The lower pane of Disk Management - you'll see DISK0, DISK1 etc...

InlandAZ,DISK0(Basic), DISK1(Removable G) DISK2 (Removable H)DISK3 RemovableI)DISK4 (Removable J) CD-ROM 0 DVD (E) CD-ROM 1 DVD (F). This is what I have listed.

So nothing currently has the drive letter D? Or maybe virtual drives don't show up in the Disk Management Tool?

I'm guessing you created a virtual drive without meaning to. If you browse your hard drives with Windows Explorer (not IE), does anything show up as a drive D?

It's possible you mounted an iso (or other image file) without meaning to by double-clicking it. That might happen if you have software install that can handle the mounting of disk image files. If it's still mounted, you should be able to see it in Windows Explorer. Drive letters appear in Windows Explorer in Win7 something like this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/27/Windows_7_-_Windows_Explorer.png
or this
http://www.windows7home.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/mycomputer-520x360.png

Yep, that's about the only thing I can think of. Virual drives will not be listed unless an ISO is mounted.

Jenny100, Using Windows Explorer to access My Computer, shows nothing different. Letter D is no where in sight. Whatever happened, happened while I was transferring photos from computer to disc.

Did you do that using a USB device? That would take up a place.

mj2c,
USB drives usually take up the higher drive letters without a problem. I've never seen one boot a CD/DVD drive off its drive letter.


I suspect your finger trembled at an inopportune moment and caused something weird to happen with Roxio. It may be reserving D: just in case you ever decide to mount a drive image. Does your Roxio interface look anything like this?
http://forums.support.roxio.com/uploads/post-79-1197391003.jpg

Mj2c and Jenny100, I did not use a USB device. My Roxio screen matches the image in link except, I do not have "Load Disc Image" in the left hand colunm.

You might try one of the "Options" ***here***.

Or if you're OK with using F instead, just go with that.

Jenny100, I think I will just leave well enough alone, the drive works fine. The disappearance of "D" will remain a mystery.