Win 8-Unopenable tray. F-Drive, hidden or gone?

[dinger44]

As the physical button only sometimes works, Jane's been R-clicking F Drive (for 'Removable Media') then 'eject' to access the tray. Using VLC Media Player as her default player, at the end of an audio CD she cleared the playlist (as required)before proceeding to the above. But it wouldn't eject due to, 'drive still in use'. Upon more effort, 'F' Drive itself is sometimes there, sometimes not. looking at F drives properties said it was if the file of free-ware: 'Free Sound Recorder'! Un-installing that couldn't have helped. One message was, 'Shared file, no longer in use (possibly running) File Name 'NCT AudioVisualization 2.dll''. Looks like the CD/DVD driver may need to be downloaded?
Thanks in anticipation, Dinger.

 

[flyboytim]

It is quite common for optical disk drives to suffer physical failure. "As the physical button only sometimes works..." is a clue to this. It is unlikely to be a Windows 8 driver failure.

A similar problem to this happened to me on an Acer Aspire notebook about 2 years old. What had actually happened was the flat ribbon connector between the fixed part of the drive and the movable tray had at some time been trapped, developed into "concertina" kinks and eventually either shorted to the case as the insulation wore away, or developed a break in on or more of the conductor wires. Failure happened over a period of time, and the break down had knock on effects, slowing down Windows, since the OS was trying to communicate with the drive, which had no electronic failure it could report back to the OS.

Once the drive had been removed, all the OS problems vanished, and a replacement drive (second hand) was fitted later, working fine.

Physical failure can be more subtle though - anything from grit on a runner to a missing tooth on a cogwheel, or a broken spring can prevent a drive from working properly.

 

[linney]

Try the Fixit tools here as and where they relate to CD problems.

Your CD or DVD drive can't read or write media

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd_dvd_drive_problems/en-us

DVD-CD ROM DRIVE SUDDENLY STOPPED WORKING

http://social.answers.microsoft.com...e/thread/16c9b2ea-d659-4a7e-b2c2-3b223d9ec3a9

[FIX] Optical Drives (CD/DVD) Icon Not Showing in My Computer Window

http://www.askvg.com/optical-drives-are-not-showing-in-my-computer/

Windows 8 does not recognize my DVD drive.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...vd-drive/f115e396-34df-4795-8c72-b2d4029346a5

If the drive is in use (when it really isn't), sometimes this may work but I would not describe it as best practice computing. If you use the Task Manager to delete Explorer.exe. (the screen will go blank except for Task Manager). In the new task run (under file) in Task Manager browse to the Computer folder (with the DVD drive in it) and right-click the drive and eject via the browse box (don't confuse the run box with the browse box). Now see if you can eject the DVD.

After that use the run box in Task Manager to re launch Explorer.