intermittent disappearing optical drive

October 18, 2008

Hi, I have a 6 months old computer, and my optical drive disappeared

at least 5 times since then, it is very annoying. Only rebooting can

fix the problem, else the drive cannot be found either in the computer

manager or explorer. No warning or error messages are shown in the

event viewer. I extensively tried all suggested solution found on the

internet to no avail. Most of them does not even apply to my situation

anyway. I never installed any burning program or something that could

affect the optical drive, there's no lowerFilter or higherFilter

registry key to be found anywhere. This machine is super clean, the

cleanest Windows installation I ever had. It's running XP SP3 and have

a PIONEER DVR-115D drive plugged using SATA cable, my mobo is a

Gygabyte S-series GA-G33M-S2L with ICH9. AHCI is disabled, because

Windows doesn't even boot if it's enabled! That's the only problem I

ever had with this machine.

Can someone help me.

P.S.: [rant]After coming back to Windows a year and a half ago, I

really wished things were better than in the bad old days of 98SE/Me/

2000. Yes, stability has improved tremendously (and we can now copy

large file, yeah!!!), but I feel as "not in control" of my operating

system as before. I like being able to fix things myself, but the

horrible MS knowledge base is still the same maddening labyrinth that

it was back in the days. It's just got worst as half the links you can

find are pointing to "Page not found".[/rant]

October 18, 2008

Re: intermittent disappearing optical drive

SATA cables are notorious for connection issues. I'd recommend you

buy a "90-Degree Angle" cable that allows the connection to the drive

to remain snug. There are also SATA cables with clips that can help to

keep a connection from slipping.

Also all Optical drives have Firmware flash updates to address issues

and make improvements. I'd check your vendor's website and see if

any new/later version Flash modules are available for your unit.

"budu" <nbuduroi@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:0f5a0952-0e38-401f-a1bb-598bfe1efc1c@k30g2000hse.googlegroups.com...

> Hi, I have a 6 months old computer, and my optical drive disappeared

> at least 5 times since then, it is very annoying. Only rebooting can

> fix the problem, else the drive cannot be found either in the computer

> manager or explorer. No warning or error messages are shown in the

> event viewer. I extensively tried all suggested solution found on the

> internet to no avail. Most of them does not even apply to my situation

> anyway. I never installed any burning program or something that could

> affect the optical drive, there's no lowerFilter or higherFilter

> registry key to be found anywhere. This machine is super clean, the

> cleanest Windows installation I ever had. It's running XP SP3 and have

> a PIONEER DVR-115D drive plugged using SATA cable, my mobo is a

> Gygabyte S-series GA-G33M-S2L with ICH9. AHCI is disabled, because

> Windows doesn't even boot if it's enabled! That's the only problem I

> ever had with this machine.

>

> Can someone help me.

>

> P.S.: [rant]After coming back to Windows a year and a half ago, I

> really wished things were better than in the bad old days of 98SE/Me/

> 2000. Yes, stability has improved tremendously (and we can now copy

> large file, yeah!!!), but I feel as "not in control" of my operating

> system as before. I like being able to fix things myself, but the

> horrible MS knowledge base is still the same maddening labyrinth that

> it was back in the days. It's just got worst as half the links you can

> find are pointing to "Page not found".[/rant]

October 18, 2008

Re: intermittent disappearing optical drive

The disappearance could be an optical illusion ; - )