disappearing DVD-RW drive - Win7 or hardware issue?

[Roland Schweiger]

?I have here a notebook from about 2005 of the German manufacturer MEDION,
it calls itself
Medion MD98000 and has an 1,6 GHz dual-core processor, typical Intel
hardware, along with some type of DVD RW Drive.

Recently i ugpraded the memory to 4GB and installed Windows7 32-bit version
(the 64bit ver. evidently will not install).
Great, everything works fine, Win7 32bit "sees" only round about 3 GB which
is well known.

Ocasionally when running the system for a while, the DVD RW drive simply
disappears from the "Computer".
If i insert any DVD/CD, the drive rattles and whistles but it simply will
not re-appear in "Computer".

When i reboot the system or shut it down and start it again, the drive is
there and works.

Does anybody know if this is some kind of Win7 issue,
or is it rather something of the old odd laptop hardware that confuses Win7?
;-)

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

?I have here a notebook from about 2005 of the German manufacturer MEDION,
it calls itself
Medion MD98000 and has an 1,6 GHz dual-core processor, typical Intel
hardware, along with some type of DVD RW Drive.

Recently i ugpraded the memory to 4GB and installed Windows7 32-bit version
(the 64bit ver. evidently will not install).
Great, everything works fine, Win7 32bit "sees" only round about 3 GB which
is well known.

Ocasionally when running the system for a while, the DVD RW drive simply
disappears from the "Computer".
If i insert any DVD/CD, the drive rattles and whistles but it simply will
not re-appear in "Computer".

When i reboot the system or shut it down and start it again, the drive is
there and works.

Does anybody know if this is some kind of Win7 issue,
or is it rather something of the old odd laptop hardware that confuses Win7?
;-)

greetings

Roland Schweiger

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a hardware problem with the drive, or
even your new RAM, but you don't say that it failed on the old OS...

I never heard of it as a general Windows 7 problem, however.

 

[The poster formerly known as 'The Poster Formerly]

?I have here a notebook from about 2005 of the German manufacturer
MEDION, it calls itself
Medion MD98000 and has an 1,6 GHz dual-core processor, typical Intel
hardware, along with some type of DVD RW Drive.

Recently i ugpraded the memory to 4GB and installed Windows7 32-bit
version (the 64bit ver. evidently will not install).
Great, everything works fine, Win7 32bit "sees" only round about 3 GB
which is well known.

Ocasionally when running the system for a while, the DVD RW drive simply
disappears from the "Computer".
If i insert any DVD/CD, the drive rattles and whistles but it simply
will not re-appear in "Computer".

When i reboot the system or shut it down and start it again, the drive
is there and works.

Does anybody know if this is some kind of Win7 issue,
or is it rather something of the old odd laptop hardware that confuses
Win7? ;-)

greetings

Roland Schweiger

Do you have iTunes installed by chance?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+7+vanishing+dvd+drive+iTunes

 

[Roland Schweiger]

?"The poster formerly known as 'The Poster Formerly Known as Nina DiBoy'"
schrieb

Do you have iTunes installed by chance?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+7+vanishing+dvd+drive+iTunes

Interesting issue ...
But i do not use iTunes and never installed it,
i did however look through my programs to see if it got installed with some
bundle,
but did not find anything.

I have a virtual CD drive to mount images, it is called
MagicDisc/MagicIsoMaker - but i have this tool on other machines
and never experienced any disappearing hardware drives.

The RAM "seems" to be ok - i never had any blue screens with it, e.g. STOP
errors or ...driver_less_or_not_equal things
so i assume the RAM is ok.

All in all for me the question remains if something with the machine is
wrong (could certainly be possible)
or if it is some kind of incompatibility to win7 with certain software
setups.
The machine has no specific drivers for Win7 - i used all drivers for
WinVista and they installed properly without the compatibility mode,
even the laptop specific drivers for the hot key buttons work fine.

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Roland Schweiger]

?as stated, i do not use iTunes.

Also came accross ths idea

http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=169

but this is mainly ment for WinVista,
even though i deleted ‘some’ of the upperFilters and lowerFilters entries,
they slightly differ from the proposal, evidently i saved the registry
first,
now have to see if this makes any change.
Strange thing ...

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[Roland Schweiger]

?now experimented with the registry keys
upper_filers and lower_filters
but this yealds to blue screens
so i restored everything (by reparse point because loading the saved reg
file did not work).

So i guess have to live with the disappearing DVD drives ...

greetings

Roland Schweiger


"Roland Schweiger" schrieb im Newsbeitrag

?as stated, i do not use iTunes.

Also came accross ths idea

http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=169

but this is mainly ment for WinVista,
even though i deleted ‘some’ of the upperFilters and lowerFilters entries,
they slightly differ from the proposal, evidently i saved the registry
first,
now have to see if this makes any change.
Strange thing ...

greetings

Roland Schweiger

 

[jim]

?as stated, i do not use iTunes.

Also came accross ths idea

http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=169

but this is mainly ment for WinVista,
even though i deleted ‘some’ of the upperFilters and lowerFilters entries,
they slightly differ from the proposal, evidently i saved the registry
first,
now have to see if this makes any change.
Strange thing ...

greetings

Roland Schweiger

The upperFilters and lowerFilters is the problem that iTunes can cause
with a disappearing DVD drive and it has been known to happen on
xp/Vista/W7. Worth looking at if you have a dvd burning suite installed
as they have been known to cause this issue too.

 

[Jolly polly]

The upperFilters and lowerFilters is the problem that iTunes can cause
with a disappearing DVD drive and it has been known to happen on
xp/Vista/W7. Worth looking at if you have a dvd burning suite installed
as they have been known to cause this issue too.

I'd agree, the registry edit is the way to go. But it's also worth checking
your cables, both power and data, unplug and replug both. Worth also having
a look in the BIOS to make sure the DVD drive is showing up there, if it is
then it's a Windows problem, if not the problem lies elsewhere

 

[Roland Schweiger]

?"Jolly polly"

I'd agree, the registry edit is the way to go. But it's also worth
checking your cables, both power and data, unplug and replug both.
Worth also having a look in the BIOS to make sure the DVD drive is
showing up there, if it is then it's a Windows problem, if not the
problem lies elsewhere

Well as it is a notebook/laptop computer, there is no separate power
and data cable.
"Officially" the drive is an IDE drive but it uses a special laptop
interface where power and data are on the same "plug".
(i think this interface calls itself something like TEAC and was
standard in many laptops round about 2005).
The drive always shows up in the BIOS - i find strange that after
power-up, the drive stays there for about an hour
and then disappears. But it does not re-appear when inserting
anything, so it is not some kind of energy saving setting.
I do suppose it's something with the registry but all my experiments
faild in this case and yealded directly to blue screens,
so i just will have to live with that. It's an old machine anyway but
fine enough for surfing around and checking eMails

greetings

Roland