Dissapearing DVD-ROM issue

[Shark7]

Maybe some one here has some ideas.

The issue: My DVD-ROM works fine for a week or two at a time, then when running one particular game (that requires CD in the drive) the drive becomes inaccessible at a random time point. Once this happens, the DVD will not read, and if you go under computer in Windows 7, the drive will intermittently disappear and reappear, but will never become stable or read any discs. Rebooting will cause the drive to show again, but any attempt to use results in the same issue. The only way I've found to fix this so far is to turn off the computer, unplug the power and SATA cable from the DVD-Rom drive, restart the computer with no DVD, shut down and reattach the cables and restart again. At this point the drive will work fine again for a random length of time.

So far, I've replaced the drive with no effect, replaced the cable with no effect, and even swapped SATA ports with no effect.

I'm thinking something on the game DISC (which is an old game I've had for 10+ years) is causing the issue, because the base cause is always the same game (I'm guessing something with the DRM is not liking the DVD driver etc). So the simple solution to that is not to try and play that game again.

However, I'd like to know that this issue is fixed and won't keep popping up once every week or so, cause it is a pain to have to fix it with the method I listed above.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on here? I'm completely stumped by this one.

[Spacecadet]

I've seen this before, but I think it was in XP, but there are a few things I can think of.

Under System in the Device Manager you may want to look around the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller settings for the controller the Drive is on.

You can try Scan for Hardware changes from the Device Manager for this Drive.

You can try to update the Driver.

You can actually delete the Drive and have the System refind it.

There might be a Jumper on the Drive around where the cable connects - check to see where this should be strapped (if at all).

Here's another possible option :

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... -drive.htm

This might be clearer :

http://www.guidingtech.com/1874/cd-dvd- ... n-windows/

[Shark7]

Thanks Spacecadet, I'll look into this.

There is no jumper on the drive that I could see. I know on the old X86 systems, having the jumpers set wrong caused all sorts of issues, but I'll double check just to be sure I didn't over-look one.

I'll take a look at the two websites.

[Shark7]

I used the auto-fix tool from MS and it found and fixed an issue, so maybe this will solve the problem permanently. Thanks again Spacecadet. [:)]

[Qwixt]

Another thing to look through is the windows events manager, and look for any errors in there that might give a clue as to what is going on. I had a hard disk that went bad, and I did not realize how bad it was till I looked there and saw all the failures/errors in the event log.