CDROM Icon Missing

Help, My CDROM Disappeared!

It's possible that evil gnomes have snuck into your computer and stolen the CDROM drive. Or sometimes they just loosen the wires, leave the drive in your computer, and then watch as the hilarity ensues. It could be a hardware issue, but more likely, it's a software problem. It's a known problem that certain CDROM or DVD software packages don't uninstall properly, and afterwards Windows cannot find the CDROM/DVD drive. Fortunately, that problem is pretty easy to fix.

But first, let's make sure that your CDROM drive is physically connected to the computer. Open My Computer, then click on View system information. When System Properties window appears, select the Hardware tab, then press the Device Manager button.

Click the "+" sign next to DVD/CD-ROM Drives. If your CDROM device is connected and has power, at least one entry should appear under that heading, as shown in this example. If you don't see a DVD/CD-ROM Drives heading, or nothing appears beneath it, you should open up your computer and check to see if both the power and data (ribbon) cables are securely connected to the CDROM drive. See photos for examples of the connectors and the back of a typical CDROM drive.

With the computer turned OFF, remove the two cables from the connectors on the back of the drive, then reseat them firmly. Check the other end of the ribbon cable to make sure it's plugged firmly into the motherboard. Sometimes it helps to make grunting noises during this process. After restarting the computer, if the CDROM drive still doesn't show up on the My Computer or the Device Manager screen, it's probably defective.

The Software Fix

If you have eliminated gnomes, loose wires and defective hardware, there's no choice left: Blame the Software. As I mentioned earlier, removing some CD burning software can muck up your Windows system registry, preventing Windows from accessing the CDROM drive. And once in a while, a system file (driver software) may be damaged, leaving the device in limbo. If you are able to see the drive in Device Manager (see above), right click on the drive name and select Properties.

Does the Device status area show an error message that refers to a missing or corrupted driver, or Code 19, Code 31, Code 32, Code 39 or Code 41? If your CDROM drive was working, you could re-install the driver software from the manufacturer's CDROM. So that option is obviously not going to work too well. But if you can find the website of your CDROM vendor, try to download and install the most recent driver software for your CDROM drive. Sometimes that (and a system restart) will resolve the problem with Windows not "seeing" the drive.

The System Restore feature built in to Windows XP may also help. Windows periodically takes regular snapshots of your Windows configuration, settings, and program files. If you can remember the most recent time when your computer was working correctly, System Restore will roll back all system changes to that point. For help using this feature, see my illustrated System Restore article.

If none of those procedures revive the drive, we must put on the surgical gloves and hack the Windows registry. Here's what you need to do:

1. Click Start, then Run, then enter REGEDIT to open the Registry Editor
2. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Class entry
3. Under the Class entry, double click on {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right-hand pane, click ONCE to select the UpperFilters entry
5. Make sure the UpperFilters entry is highlighted, press Delete, then Yes.
6. In the right-hand pane, click ONCE to select the LowerFilters entry
7. Make sure the LowerFilters entry is highlighted, press Delete, then Yes.
8. Close the Registry Editor by clicking File, Exit.

Restart your computer, and the CDROM drive should now show up on the My Computer screen. You may need to re-install your CDROM software if it's not working properly.