CD Drives have disappeared in Vista

Question

One day, out of the blue, my wife's CD Drives disappeared from Windows Explorer without warning and little trace. Device Manager shows them both with Code 39 warnings. One is an LG GGW-H20L BD Burner Drive and the other a Pioneer BDC-202 BD-ROM Drive and the OS is Vista.

So far I have tried unplugging/re-plugging the cables, uninstalling/re-installing the drivers and downloading new drivers. Windows says it already has the latest drivers. The LG and Pioneer websites don't seem to have downloadable drivers specific to these drives.

Answer 1

Stumbled accross this post while trying to find my answer which had similar symptoms. I don't know what of my program caused the conflict, but the below fixed it!

1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit in the Programs list.
2. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password, or click Continue.

3. Locate, and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

   Caution: There can be many instances of the registry subkey that is mentioned in step 2. You must make sure that you are in the appropriate registry subkey before modifying the UpperFilters and the LowerFilters values. To verify that you are in the appropriate registry subkey, make sure that the Default data value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class data value is CDROM.

4. In the right pane, if you have UpperFilters, right-click UpperFilters, and then click Delete. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.

5. In the right pane, if you have LowerFilters, right-click LowerFilters, and then click Delete. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.

6. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

   Note After you remove the UpperFilters registry entry and the LowerFilters registry entry, you may lose functionality in certain programs such as CD recording programs. In this scenario, you must reinstall any affected programs. If the problem recurs, contact the program vendor to determine whether an update is available for the program.

This procedure was extracted from here.