Windows Vista does not recognize CD drive -- virtual or physical

pioneerx01

Posts: 279   +2
I was looking at computer today that had some issues originally with wireless connectivity. The wireless dongle is a Quest design that comes with build in virtual drive that contains drivers. Once plugged in to any USB port it did not launch the virtual CD drive with drivers (It worked on my PC) thus I can not work the device.

I went to device manager and it turns out that the PC does not recognize (unknown device) the physical CD drive either (but I can boot from it). Out of curiosity I have plugged in my U3 enabled USB drive that has a virtual CD drive on it as well and it too wan an unknown device. In Vistas device manager they are all located under CD/DVD device section.

I have proceed to do a system restore the a time when the Quest wireless dongle worked, but after two separate attempts and waiting 20 minutes to restore I got "system restore was not completed, nothing was changed message.

And yes I have tried to disable/enable the devices and uninstall/restart the PC, even in safe mode and still nothing.

Any thoughts?
 
This sounds like a problem with drivers, as I suspect you don't know the history of this PC I would run through some basic checks. Follow this first guide to clean out any redundant drivers.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/remove-old-drivers-after-upgrading-to-new-hardware/

Then look in Device Manager, click on the View tab and select "Show Hidden Devices" see if there are any yellow warnings.

Reinstall all the chipset drivers.

Check in the Bios that the CD drive is recognised and enabled.

Run sfc /scannow and chkdsk /r from an elevated command prompt.

Let us know if you need a more detailed guide and state the make and model of the PC.
 
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