Windows 7 upgrade has now lost CD/DVD drive on laptop

[PCVirgin]

I recently upgraded my 3 year old HP laptop from Windows Vista to Windows 7 Ultimate.

Subsequently to this upgrade the laptop no longer recognises the CD/DVD drive. I've ene removed said drive, started, shut down and restarted laptop, added drive and it still does not recognise it.

Can anyone help?

 

[PCVirgin]

Update:

I thought I'd take the 'experts' advice and replace the 'faulty' DVD drive with a new one.

Low and behold no difference. The laptop still does not recognise the drive in any way shape or form.

Can anyone help?

 

[Nelviticus]

Nobody here is paid to help you, everyone who has posted is voluntarily taking time out of their day trying to resolve the problem of a complete stranger. So please be more polite to them.

When you're in Device Manager, on the 'View' menu there's an option to 'Show hidden devices'. Does selecting this make the drive appear?

Nelviticus

 

[biglebowski]

Have you run windows update yet, there are often optional hardware updates that you have to tick to be installed. One of those may help.

Biglebowskis Razor - with all things being equal if you still can't find the answer have a shave and go down the pub.

 

[Freestone]

I much earlier asked if the drive shows up in Disk Management and if it shows up, does it need a drive letter assigned?


Not

laptop no longer recognises the CD/DVD drive. which to me means it is not shown in the device manager nor has a drive letter.

Disk Management and Device Manager are two separate things.

But forgot about any OS at the moment and start from scratch. Does the laptop BIOS see the CD drive? Can you boot from the CD drive? From an earlier post you said you couldn't. If this is still the case, then the problem lies not with Windows 7 but wth the laptop itself, somewhere between the CD-ROM interface and the motherboard, or a BIOS setting that somehow disables the onboard DVD/CD-ROM drive.

 

[PCVirgin]

Nelviticus - I have shown all hidden devices and the DVD drive is not shown.

Biglebowski - I am updating the Windows 7 software (only 1 outstanding update) and will get back to you.

Freestone - The DVD drive is not showing anywhere in the laptop. I have check the disk management tool and the DVD drive is not showing. Where can I check to see the 'disabled' option?

 

[kjv1611]

If the drive isn't showing in the BIOS, then it's just toast. If that is the case, I'd suggest just picking up a USB DVD drive for those occasions when you need one, just do without it, or if you want, look for a compatible one on eBay - used, maybe. From when I've looked in the past, optical drives for laptops can often be VERY expensive - used, new, whatever, but especially new.

On one of our laptops, recently, something killed the DVD burner and hard drive... well, not totally on the hard drive, but enough to make the laptop unusable. I used a USB adapter with a standard desktop IDE DVD drive, reinstalled Windows, etc.. and just ignore the internal optical drive. We now get an annoying "CD Rom Error" at every boot, but otherwise it works (using a different spare - slow as Christmas) hard drive at the time... until I get 'round to sending the damaged drive in under warranty.

 

[PCVirgin]

kjv1611,

I have purchased a new DVD drive for the laptop. Strangely when I added the new drive to the laptop and booted the laptop detected new hardware and suggested I restore the laptop to factory settings. Not a good idea as I have several GB of data on the laptop.

I am still open to suggestions.

PS I do have an external DVD drive but wish (if possible) to try and find a solution to my initial problem.

 

[kjv1611]

Does it give you any other options than restoring the system? It doesn't make any sense that Windows would say that, unless it's some built in OEM annoyance-ware. If you can get into Windows, you can probably just kill the startup entry for whatever is suggesting that or else uninstall it.

 

[Freestone]

I will ask again...

Can you boot from the new internal DVD/CD drive?

If you can then that pretty much narrows it down to the
operating system, if not, then it may be hardware.

Does the HP laptop's BIOS give any indication it recognizes the drive?

 

[PCVirgin]

Ok. When I removed the old DVD drive and added the new on e the laptop said I would need to restore to proceed. I chose not to restore. I then booted as normal with old DVD drive then physically removed it and tried to 'add new hardware' the laptop does not automatically find any new hardware.

I have subsequently removed the old DVD drive for the new one and now the laptop does not ask to restore but ignores the fact I have added new hardware. I cannot see anywhere where the DVD drive is shown in the laptop.

Neither the old nor new DVD drive will force the laptop to boot from disc.

 

[kjv1611]

PCVirgin,

With the new drive installed (physically), does your laptop BIOS recognize the drive? Besides that, if you enter your boot options at startup (the how will depend upon your laptop - can be the Esc key, the F8 key, F12, or some other Fn key) and then select the CD/DVD drive, does it attempt to read from that drive?

We're all just trying to narrow down whether this is purely a software or hardware issue. If you just stick a disk in, and it doesn't try to boot from the drive, that doesn't mean that it's a hardware issue. It could simply be that the boot order is set to hard drive first (which is really common on newer machines).

 

[PCVirgin]

I gave up. I reset the laptop back to its original factory settings using the backup on the D: drive. Not longer using Windows 7 but Windows Vista Home.

and guess what?

I still cannot see the DVD drive! In the BIOS, in the device manager, in the disk manager or anywhere else on the laptop.

I've changed the boot order of the machine to read from the CD rom drive as the primary target.

 

[kjv1611]

Okay... if you swapped out the DVD drive, and still can't see it anywhere - including BIOS, then it sounds to me more like one of the following possibilities:
1. Try as you may, you didn't quite get the new one connected correctly.
2. It wasn't the drive after all, but the ATA controller on the motherboard which the drive connects through.
3. If there's a wire between the board and your DVD drive, then possibly that wire is bad/flaky.

 

[tlcscousin]

Check the wording of the message is it saying to reset the bios to defaults or re install the OS?

 

[Freestone]

Good point tlcscousin.

PCVirgin, this clearly isn't an Operating System issue. Go into the laptop BIOS. Somewhere in there should be an option to Load Default Settings or Load Factory Settings or something to that effect. Choose that option, be sure it actually does the load of the settings and then Save these new settings. Reboot and see if the DVD works. If that doesn't help I would conclude there is a hardware problem.

 

[DTracy]

Quote for PCVirgin:

"and guess what?I still cannot see the DVD drive! In the BIOS, in the device manager, in the disk manager or anywhere else on the laptop.I've changed the boot order of the machine to read from the CD rom drive as the primary target. "


How did you change the boot order in BIOS if you couldn't see the DVD drive in BIOS?

 

[BadBigBen]

DTracy,

there are some BIOS versions that do allow you to set ODD as a boot item, even if there isn't any attached...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[DTracy]

Ben,

Ok, my bad, sorry.

David.

 

[BadBigBen]

Don't fret, it was just a FYI thingy... ;-)

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[roland63]

This happened to me once and it turned out to be the cd/dvd burning software. Name slips my mind but it sure drove us crazy for days.

Perhaps you may want to uninstall it, check optical drive status then re-install burning software?