DVD player has disappeared

Question

Hi there, I recently purchased an inspiron 3793 and have been using it for about a year. For absolutely no reason at all, the dvd drive has disappeared from file explorer. I have read many forums and fixes and nothing I have tried has worked.

So far I have:

tried to fix the problem on the command line.

tried to fix the problem by adding it in the registry using reg edit.

The drive doesn't show up in the device manager and there has been no event to cause the computer to stop recognising it.

Please can someone give me some suggestions as to what I need to do it's driving me mad!

Thank you in advance.

n.stewart30 · Accepted Answer

Ok, so here is what it was. After taking the bottom of the computer off there is a ribbon cable that connects the DVD drive to the motherboard. The cable at the motherboard end had been incorrectly installed, there is a white plastic retaining plug that was installed the wrong way around. This meant the ribbon was completely loose. Taking this plug out, turning it around and re-plugging it in to the pin with the ribbon cable sitting in the holster trapped the ribbon in the holster as it should be. The minute I re started the machine, the DVD started whirring straight away and was recognized by Windows.

ejn63 · Answer

Does the drive show up in system setup (F2 at powerup)?

n.stewart30 · Answer

So having checked it, I cant find it anywhere in the bios settings. I did upgrade the bios could that be why it has disappeared?

n.stewart30 · Answer

Where would I find that - I know by pressing f2 on boot up, but where in the menus would it be?

n.stewart30 · Answer

Any help would be gratefully appreciated. I still have the issue of not being able to use the dvd drive on my 3 month old Dell. Thanks

xiaomei · Answer

This failure may be caused by damage to the registry. The solutions are as follows:

1. Click "Start" to run regedit.exe, enter the registry editor, and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11C E-BFC1-08002BE10318} in the item bar on the left. Find the "LowerFilters" item in the right window. Right click to delete.

2. Then uninstall the problematic CD-ROM drive in the device manager. After uninstalling, left-click "Operation (A)" or right-click "Scan for hardware changes" in the "Computer Name" at the top of all drivers, and the CD-ROM drive will be found. At this time, the optical drive is back to normal.

n.stewart30 · Answer

Hi there,

Thank you for your suggestions. Unfortunately, when looking at the file in the registry, there are no upper of lower filter files.

The DVD drive is not listed in the device manager to uninstall and when a scan is requested it doesn't show up.

Any ideas what's going on. I'm at the point of wanting to take the back of the computer off to look if it's a hardware issue, but was hoping someone might have the answer.

I updated the bios on the dell site and don't know whether that might have something to do with it, but annoyingly I can't downgrade my bios version as the previous version is not supported.

MissAnnThropic · Answer

I'm having a similar issue, after a Windows attempt to update from ver. 1909 to ver. 20H2 (unsuccessful, at that ...). Now, the DVD/CD ROM not only does not show up under 'Device Manager', there is also nothing in BIOS suggesting that there IS a DVD/CD player ... but hey, the drawer is still on the side of the laptop, and if I put a DVD in the drawer, and close it, I can hear it whirl for about a minute, before it shuts down, and the whirling does not have any appreciable effect on the pc screen/messages ... sigh.

I am a bit suspicious that perhaps something has 'come undone' under the cover ... but here's something puzzling me about your post. You wrote : "The cable at the motherboard end had been incorrectly installed, there is a white plastic retaining plug that was installed the wrong way around. This meant the ribbon was completely loose. Taking this plug out, turning it around and re-plugging it in to the pin with the ribbon cable sitting in the holster trapped the ribbon in the holster as it should be." But ... wouldn't that mean that the player would have never worked, from the time you purchased it? Just wonderin' ...

LiamOliver · Answer

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DVD player has disappeared

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