Computer Stopped Recognizing CD/DVD Drive

[Niklas]

Basically I've been using my CD/DVD drive about every other week to burn a CD or two of my music. A couple of days I was going to burn another CD in Windows Media Player but it said that there was no Burning Device.

I check on the "My Computer" screen and it doesn't display it there like it usually does. I check my system specs and now see the entire computer doesn't recognize it having a CD/DVD drive at all.

I tried putting some games in or an audio CD and they start spinning, but the computer never starts them up or even recognizes that a new disk was placed into the drive.

Any suggestions on what went wrong here? I haven't installed any new software recently although I did have to get rid of a nastly little virus. Malwarebyte got rid of that easily though and I honestly doubt a Trojan would try to target my CD drive of all things.

Any advice you could give me on how to fix this problem? Would installing new drivers help since the hardware isn't even recognized? Would unplugging it and plugging it back in help? Do I need to scrap this one and get a new one?

Hoping to get some replies to this soon as I'm getting a bit bored of hearing the same tunes in my car.

Thanks,
Niklas

[4th&3wood]

Check in the Device Manager under DVD/CD-ROM to see if there is an error. Click in the small box with the X inside to expand the tree. You might try uninstalling it from there and rebooting your computer to see if the installation Wizard recognizes it as new hardware. If if does it will look for the appropriate drivers for it, if you have drivers on a CD for this drive you will want to reinstall them.

[Niklas]

I ended up just taking it out and blowing the dust out and then the computer recognized it again.

@4th&3wood - the problem was the computer wouldn't even recognize it had any hardware in that category.

[4th&3wood]

I suspect that it was a bad connection and when you reinstalled it you corrected that.

Glad to hear you solved your problem.