One day you turn on your computer and cannot see the CD-ROM or the DVD-ROM drive in the My Computer window anymore. This problem is very common for laptop and notebook computers and might be caused by a failed drive or by corrupted software. You can try the following repair steps before you decide that your drive is bad.
- I found this solution on Microsoft website and it helped me many times to fix the problem with a missing DVD/CD-ROM drive. I always try removing the CD/DVD drive from the device manager first and if it doesn’t fix the problem I go with removing the registry entry. Method 1 worked very well for me.
- If the above mentioned methods didn’t work for you, you can try to reseat the optical drive. Overtime the CD-ROM drive connector might get oxidized and a simple drive reseating can fix the problem. Try to remove the drive from the laptop and put it back. See if it will fix the problem.
- You can also try to boot from any bootable CD to see if you laptop recognize the CD-ROM drive on BIOS level. Put any bootable CD (Live Linux CD, Windows XP CD, Windows 2000 CD, etc) into the CD-ROM drive and change the boot order to start from the CD-ROM drive. If you laptop starts to boot from the CD, then the drive is recognized in BIOS and most likely it operates properly. In this case look for a software problem. It might be necessary to reload the operating system to fix the software problem. If you cannot boot your laptop from a bootalbe CD, then the drive might be bad itself.
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June 28th, 2006 at 11:11 am
It’s possible that a defective DVD drive stops the entire system from booting. Try to remove the drive and turn on the laptop. See if you can boot with video. Can you get video on the screen?
June 26th, 2006 at 7:29 am
Hi, everyone. My Toshiba Satellite A35 turns on but doesn’t start. When I plug in the energy cord the energy led’s turns on. When I and press the start button it try to, but a recursive sound (tac, tac, tac…) begin and flashes the DVD led’s and the screen is off. If I open the DVD unit with a clip, then the sound stops but the computer does anything else. I was wondering if anyone can help me.
May 12th, 2006 at 6:20 am
A few more detail of what happen on the drive d: (cd-rom) I do the system check on device manager ,it show have cd-rom on drive d:and device unit say it operate correctly, I insert the cd and watch the unit the light blink two flah then stop which I assume they know it has cd inside . I clik to open the file is empty.I clik the eject from the keyboard, it eject the drive o.k.Perhap my driver is bad so I uninstall then reboot the system window reinstall the driver and it did show the same as it beore. My question is ? Is the cd unit optical reader is bad or the spin motor drive cd is defective, there is no noise of the motor and . How to test the drive before purchase the replacement unit.
Thank you to any one for try to help me out this solution
Tin
May 11th, 2006 at 6:02 am
I did per this suggestion and still not fix the problem, please give more advise
Thank you
May 10th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Tin,
Go to device manager and uninstall the CD-ROM driver. After that reboot the laptop. Windows will locate and install the driver automatically. See if it can fix the problem.
May 10th, 2006 at 6:42 am
Toshiba satellite labtop model 2405-S201 show cdrom/dvd r/w work properly in the system but can not read any file at all
April 13th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
Hi Rory,
I think your old DVD-RW is just dead, and new one has a different configuration then the old one. If you want to repair the laptop yourself, try to replace a failed part with the original Toshiba part (you can find it by a part number).
It is also possible that the controller on the system board is bad and even a new original device will not be recognized. Sorry, cannot give you a good advice. It is impossible to troubleshoot this kind of problems over the Internet.
April 13th, 2006 at 4:10 am
My Toshiba Satellite A75’s DVD RW drive vanished one day as in the article above. I decided to DIY after a quote came back for repair as more than the current value. I can’t access the regedit program and the device didn’t show up so that I could replace the driver. Boot cd didn’t register either. I ordered a Panasonic combo drive to replace the original and installed. Nothing has changed from my original problems. Is there a trojan eating away at my DVD drives or IDE channels? Please help?!
April 1st, 2006 at 10:01 pm
Hi Wally,
I know that this problem exists with some optical drives. I’ve never seen it myself, but here is my guess. For example, your laptop has only one IDE channel. Both drives, the hard drive and the CD-Rom drive connect to the same channel. The hard drive is configures as a master. If your optical drive is configured as a master too then you’ll get an error. Try to compare both drives you have and see if you can find how they are configured, may be it’s labeled somewhere. I guess you are getting the error because your new drive is configured differently then the old drive.
After a quick research I found this thread. It might help to you.
April 1st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
My toshiba 1800 laptop does not recognize my new Teac DV28E dvd rom.On boot up it displays IDE # 1 error.When I install my old DV28E drive there is no problem booting up it is recognises but the optical drive does not function.If I then hot swap drives the new drive will work properly until I reboot, the laptop will not boot up and I have to restart all over again.
Please help me.