[SOLVED] VISTA SP 2 DVD/CD Drive Disappeared

[Humble]

I had installed MagicDisk and MagicISO (?) that created a Virtual DVD drive for Images.

After repairing and installing several Windows updates and uninstalling the above two programs, my optical DVD/CD drive doesn't show up any more where storage and removable drives are listed in C ... it does not even show up in Device Manager.

Running Add Hardware control panel doesn't restore it either.

What can I do to make the drive re-appear?

 

[Digerati]

Is this an internal or external DVD?

Either way, I would uninstall the driver, then do a "cold" shutdown. That is shutdown Windows unplug the computer from the wall. Then totally disconnect the drive and boot. Then another cold shutdown, connect the drive and boot and see if it appears. If not, you might try this drive on another computer and see what happens.

 

[Humble]

this optical DVD/CD ROM drive is inside a SONY notebook and it worked like a charm before. Meanwhile I did a system restore to before MagicDisk uninstall.

Now it shows virtual clone drive again, but the optical drive neither shows up in device mgr nor disk management nor in My Computer. so how do I uninstall the DVD driver, as you suggest, can you help me out with that?

 

[Humble]

Update:

Thank you, happy to report this issue has been SOLVED.

While not 100% certain, I suspect that installing the virtual drive software somehow caused a power cut to my optical DVD/CD drive -- which disappeared it from Explorer (My Computer) , Device Manager and Disk Management.

I was unaware of that situation till I started playing with the little icon in my notification tray that lets me toggle optical DVD/CD drive power.

Now both virtual and optical drive peacefully co-exist in Explorer, with different drive letters.
Both are also represented in Device Manager and Disk Management

 

[Digerati]

Great! Glad you got it sorted out and thanks for posting your followup! :)