The cd/dvd drive in my one year old dell stopped working all of a sudden. It will not recognize any cd or dvd. I may have deleted the software for it accidently. Please tell me how I can trouble shoot and find out what has happened. Thank you all for your time.

Hello moat...

Optical drive failure is one of the most common hardware failures and are usually related to a weak or failed laser.

That said, let's explore this a bit. Does the drive show in My Computer?

wannabe1

thanks for replying yes it shows up in my computer and it says that the device is working properly in the device manager

Does the drive spin up when you insert a disk and close the tray?

it does not sound like it but it never really did sound like it. Th menu bar above on the my computer screen shows that it is busy reading the cd but to no avail. I may have deleted the file to run it if it is in the all programs menu.

continues to say insert a disc the entire time I used it earlier in the day and then I deleted some junk files that our kids had on there and all of a sudden it did not work maybe I deleted something I shouldn't have...

This post has been edited by moat: Sep 4 2008, 12:55 PM

Try running the Microsoft Autoplay Repair Wizard on it and see if it will start recognizing media again.

tried to use that program and it kept saying stopped working...blahblahblah...a problem caused the program to stop it from working even though I ran it as administrator and allowed it to be trusted still did not work. ?

This post has been edited by moat: Sep 4 2008, 01:10 PM

Ah...I take it this is a Vista machine.

Let's uninstall the drive from Device Manager and have Windows reinstall it with fresh drivers.

First, click the Start orb and type prefetch in the search box at the bottom of the menu and then click the folder that appears at the top of the menu. You may have to escalate your permissions by accepting the UAC prompts. In the prefetch folder, click "Organize" on the toolbar, and choose "Select All"...press the delete key and accept the deletion. Close the prefetch folder.

Then open Device Manager and expand DVD/CD-ROM drives. Right click on your optical drive and choose "Uninstall"...accept the change. Close Device Manager.

Reboot and see if the drive works properly after Windows reinstalls it.

still no luck

It's really sounding like a drive failure.

Let's check for filters in the registry, though I don't really think that's the problem.

Click the Start orb and type regedit in the search field...click on regedit at the top of the search field.

In Registry Editor, in the left pane, expand (click +) HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then SYSTEM, then CurrentControlSet, then Control, then Class, and click on {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In the right pane, are UpperFilters and/or LowerFilters listed?

yes both are listed

In the left pane, right click on {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} and choose "Export". Name this file oldfilters and save it to your desktop.
In the right pane, right click on LowerFilters and choose "Delete"...accept the change. Right click on UpperFilters and choose "Delete"...accept the change.

Close Registry Editor and reboot.

See if your drive works.

still no luck

When was this drive last working properly?

Right click on the oldfilters file you saved to the desktop and choose "Merge"....accept the change. Then you can delete the file from the desktop.