I seem to have lost my Drive E

Hi SpotsyBridge,

Normally, the missing DVD drive following the installation of iTunes is caused by the old upper and lower filter problem. I assume you have XP or Vista, so you should be able to fix this problem using the Microsoft Fit-it utility, for which I have a link below.

Bought new CD's recently, was going to rip them to my Dell Inspiron 530S desktop.  Went to Windows media to start ripping, no dice! Unknown to me until I investigated, I no longer have a Drive E, which was assigned to my CD/DVD unit.  I want to map my Drive E back into action, but cannot recall where to map to.  I believe this took place after recently purchasing iTunes from Apple.  They made a note about checking system configs, I now see what they were checking!  Anyhow, help with exact map route for Drive E!   Would be much appreciated!

That did not fix problem.  This is under Windows Vista.  I know the CD unit was mapped to Drive E, but do not recall the tag the system put on it.  

Ok, when you ran Fix-it, it reported whether a problem was found and whether it was fixed. Tell me what you saw.

Drive mapping does not apply to a local drive. You are referring to the drive letter assigned by the OS.

Simply says device not found. MSFIX-IT found no problems, did not apply any fixes.

Ok, time to check the BIOS. Boot to system setup (F2) and check your SATA drives. Make sure the port for your DVD drive is turned on in the section called standard CMOS features.

Checked BIOS.  DVD drive was turned on in CMOS features of SATA drives.

Ok, next thing to try...

Open device manager and see if your drive appears as a device under CD/DVD drives. If you see an exclamation point, check device properties to see what the error is.

Yes to exclamation point.  Under properties, device unable to start, says it needs a driver software update.  Tried search took forever.  Error # was 10.  Recommendations on software?

You could clean up your operating system of all non connected devices, uninstall the problem device, then scan for new hardware.

To uninstall non connected devices do the following:

- Right click "Computer" and select "Properties" which will open the "Control Panel Home" window. Then select "Advanced system settings" on the right pane of this new window. This will result in the "System Properties" window being displayed with the "Advanced" tab being automatically selected for you. From within this "Advanced" tab, click "Environment Variables",then in the pop-up window click "New" under the system variable section towards the bottom. Within the "New System Variable" pop-up window, enter "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices" for the Variable name, and "1" for variable value (both without quotes). Now press the "OK" button to close the window (and repeat for all other open windows).

- Right click "My Computer" and select "Manage" to open the "Computer Manager" window, then click on the "Device Manager" within the right pane. From the pull down menu, select . Now, not only can you see hidden devices, BUT you can also see all "non connected devices" which are represented using a light gray icons.

- If you now start at the top of the list (device by type is the desired and default view), and expand each type, you should see all devices of that type ever connected to your computer. For example, under "Disk drives' you will see all HDD, memory sticks, USB HDD, etc, that you have ever connected to your computer.

- For each of the light gray "non connected" device, you can right click and select "Uninstall" and then select "OK" to confirm. This can be done without issue for all of your non connected devices. Just make sure you go through the complete list, one by one. It will take a little time, especially if you have connected and disconnected a lot of different USB sticks to your system.

To uninstall the problem device, do the following:

- You should only have one DVD drive listed as connected under "DVD/CD-Rom drives" within "Device Manager". As note in earlier posts, it will have a yellow exclamation mark on it indicating there is a problem with the device. Right click the your DVD drive and select "Uninstall" and confirm by selecting "OK" in the pop-up window. Then, just to be pedantic, i would restart the machine then start "Device Manager". Within "Device manager" i would left click on the top device, your machine name, to select it and from the menu options select .

- If all goes well, the DVD drive should be reinstalled correctly and after a minute or two, you should see the DVD drive is visible within "Computer" as a DVD drive with a drive letter assigned.

Also, within "Computer Manager", the right pane contains the "Disk Management" application and when clicked on will show a representation of what storage volumes and hardware is connected to the computer. In the case of hardware, if you look at the lower pane, it should show your connected HDD's and DVD drives. Right clicking the DVD drive in this lower pane will provide you with some options:

- Change drive letter
- Eject
- Properties
- Help

So if a drive letter other than "E" was assigned, you may be able to reassign "E" as the drive letter for this DVD hardware. Right clicking "CD-ROM 0" and selecting "Change drive letter", then select the drive from the listed drives and click "Change". The rest should be obvious. 

Do that note that all this is based on what the OS can see, so if the BIOS does not see the DVD drive, you either have a BIOS setting issue or a hardware issue to resolve.

If this does not resolve your DVD issue, at least your system should boot a little quicker :)

Good luck.

Try the manual registry fix for Vista:

1. Click Start, and then click All Programs.

2. Click Accessories, and then click Run.

3. Type regedit, and then click OK. If you are prompted for an administrator password or for a confirmation, type the password, or click Allow.

4. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

5. In the right pane, click UpperFilters.

Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 8.

6. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

7. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

8. In the right pane, click LowerFilters.

Note If you do not see the LowerFilters registry entry, unfortunately this content cannot help you any further. Go to the "Next Steps" section for information about how you can find more solutions or more help on the Microsoft Web site.

9. On the Edit menu, click Delete.

10. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.

11. Exit Registry Editor.

12. Restart the computer.

When I go to the HKEY you mentioned, it says nothing about filters.  Simply says default with no data.

Here are the values in my registry under that sub-key:

Tell me if you see a similar list.

I have nothing like that.   All mine says is Default under Name....REG_SZ under type....value not set under Data.

Spotsy,

If you have nothing showing within this registry key, then it looks like your operating system doesn't see a DVD drive as installed ! This may be due to a hardware issue or it may be due a registry issue as a result of some software problem (iTunes?).

First you should try and eliminate any hardware issues.

You may want to revisit the basics and check that the SATA port being used by the DVD drive itself is enables within BIOS and working, that the SATA and power cable used by the DVD drive are correctly connected and the DVD drive spins up when you turn on your system AND that the DVD drive is seen within the BIOS and boot process before Windows starts.Best way to check this is to replace the DVD drive with another HDD if you have one as it will check the cabling and power and OS...

You can also use a cd boot disk like "Dam Small Linux" or some other linux boot disk to boot your computer. If DSL sees your DVD drive and can read DVD and CD disks, then you have confirmed the issue is with Windows Vista and not the hardware itself...

Also consider my previous post. Have you tried to uninstall all non present devices and uninstall your DVD drive from within device manager? If so, when you scanned for new hardware, was the DVD drive actually found and installed and what was then shown within your device manager?

I assume VISTA also has a Snipping Tool which will allow you to take a snap of your device manager and registry windows and attach them to your next post as this can be helpful to those that spare their time to help you.

This is what i have on my Win7Pro Z210 workstation device manager:

you can see my BluRay drive listed as "HT-DL-ST BD-RE BH14NS40", and from within my registry:

which shows the BD drive as a default of  "DVD/CD-ROM drives", class of "CDROM", and other relevant info associated with drivers, including LowFilters of "PxHlpa64".

And from disk management, you see the DCD drive as "CD-ROM 0" as shown below:

Note that if you right click the "CD-ROM 0" box you will have a menu where you can change drive letters.

If you have checked your hardware is OK, and Dam Small Linux works with your hardware but you still have issues after removing non connected devices and uninstalling your DVD drive and rescanned for new hardware but nothing is found or the hardware is found but many keys are still missing from your registry, then your registry may be messed up and it may be much easier to back up your files and rebuild your OS. It may take an hour or so to back up your data but once you reinstall the OS and APPS, you will have a clean system...

So be methodical and post exactly what you find, pictures are great...