Vista no longer recognizes CD/DVD drive

The CD/DVD drive used to work, but now doesn't. I don't know of anything changed since them. No drive is recognized and I can't open the drive once Vista takes over. I can open it while it's booting.

I searched the forums and found something about deleting the upper and lower filters in the registry and followed that. My registry had three "Control Sets", ControlSet001, ControlSet003, and CurrentControlSet. I was able to delete the upper filters in sets 1 and 3, but there was no upper filter in CurrentControlSet. None had lower filters.

That slightly changed the problem. Previously the CD activity LED stayed off, but now it's always on. However, the drive still doesn't open, and nothing is recognized. I went to the device manager and I didn't see any optical drive.

And one other interesting thing - When the laptop wakes up from screensaver, the CD/DVD drive starts spinning and won't stop. Still can't open the drive, and it's still not recognized.

Any ideas on what to do next?

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs

try this automated fix.

Hi irony58 and welcome to the forums.

Is there any way for you to swap your optical drive with a friend? Two laptops from the same brand should work. In case you try that and discover it is something with your Windows Vista, try running the repair utility. If that doesn't help, run TuneUp Utilities to solve the problem by re-building the registry according to the signed drivers for that optical drive.

EDIT: try kword88's solution first... if that doesn't help, try mine which comsumes a lot more of time :P

Cheers,

I did try kword88's method, sort of. I found a similar Microsoft page that listed the DIY steps, but not the automated version. Removing the filters didn't change much, and there is no CD/DVD in the Device Manager to remove. But I'll try the automated fix, just in case it does something not lists in the DIY.

I don't know of anyone with a similar laptop, so that's out. But if the automated fix doesn't do it, I can try the TuneUp and other registry fixers.

Thanks.
--Marc

OK, I tried a couple things that just made it more puzzling. First, the automated fix just said nothing was wrong. Next, I tried booting a Ubuntu disc. That's were things got confusing. I can only pop open the drive before Vista start, so it's kind of a race. The first time, I was late getting the Ubuntu disc in and it went into Vista. But this time, the CD worked perfectly. It was recognized and I could read the files on the disc. So I think the HW is fine.

Then I tried to restart to run Ubuntu, but no go. It no longer boots from CD, which it used to do. So, let's look at the BIOS setting. That is no broken, somehow. I can look at system info and do the safe boot thing. But the F9, which is supposed to get into setup, doesn't work at all. So I can't look at the drive settings to see if I can changed the boot sequence. F10 is supposed to let me change the boot sequence, so it says, but that doesn't work either.

I'm going to look for Compaq laptop help now, but if anyone here has seen something like this, I'd love to hear about it. Or does anyone know if Vista can somehow muck up BIOS settings and operation?

I am really less than impressed with this Compaq/Vista connection.