DVD Drive works but does not appear in Explorer_Windows 7

[BambiBoomZ]

Hewlett-Packardians,

The trusty z420_3:

HP z420_3: (2015) (R11) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ HP/LSI 9212-4i > Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 4TB / ASUS Essence STX + Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K

[Passmark System Rating: = 5644 / CPU = 15293 / 2D = 847 / 3D = 10953 / Mem = 2997 Disk = 4858 /Single Thread Mark = 2384 [6.27.19]

This was purchased new and somewhere in the past, the DVD drive disappeared from Windows Explorer. It is shown in Device Manager with no fault notification, as working properly, and that the current driver is the best choice.

There's some possibility that the may have never appeared as I've never used the DVD drive except to write a few backup disks; everything else , including installing Windows and the programs was done using USB drives. Setting up DVD disks in Nero Burning ROM, files were simply added and burned- I don't remember any failures.  The drive is the original "HP DVD A DH16AESH SCSI CdRom Device" connected to one of the motherboard SATA ports with the original cable.

I've tried: all the techniques in this article:  7 Best Ways to Fix CD/DVD Missing or Not Showing Up in Windows 10/8/7

These involve mostly detailed registry editing, plus a generic drive known to be working was tried, the drive was uninstalled and reinstalled twice, the SATA cable replaced, the HP/LSI 9212-4i HBA/ RAID controller was removed, and the SATA connection was moved to a M/B  SATA 2.0 HD connector, and using a command prompt, "wmic logicaldisk get name" did not include the DVD drive. Still, nothing ever changed; it works to burn DVD'S and signals that it reads when disks it nserted- whirring sound, flashing activity light, but can not be accessed. The z620_2 is not a help as it has an ancient (2013) Lightscribe drive in it and all the registry entries are very different as that has the image writing program on it.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

BambiBoomZ

HP z620_2 (2017) (R7) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / Quadro P2000 5GB _ GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB + HP/HGST Enterprise 6TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit (HP OEM) > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

[ Passmark Rating = 6280 / CPU rating = 17178 / 2D = 819 / 3D= 12629 / Mem = 3002 / Disk = 13751 / Single Thread Mark = 2368 [10.23.18]

[DGroves]

go into disk management, select the DVD then change the device letter to "Z" if it accepts it without any errors you may have a 3rd party CD/DVD app that is not registering the drive letter change usually removing 3rd party software such as burning packages and reinstalling them will force a update to the new drive letter

[BambiBoomZ]

DGroves,

There were a number of references to changing the drive letter among the various suggested procedures for what appears to be a common problem, but the problem from the beginning is that is no drive letter to be seen anywhere.  The only program that can see the DVD drive is Nero Burning ROM / Express and that calls it "MyDrive". 

UPDATE:  I'd done a number of tries to uninstall and reinstall the drive but it seems the problem is the old W7 installation. Since posting  I found a dormant HGST 7K6000 3TB, made a bootable USB drive and installed  Windows 10 for Workstations on z420_3. I was curious about the W10 Workstation version and how W10 would work on z420_3 and whether the ASUS Essence STX S/C and importantly, XTU 5.2.0.14, would work.  One thing I noticed was that the driver for the GTX 1060 6GB for W10 is 671MB as compared to the 523MB for W7 Pro.

Good outcomes: I believe I've found the answer. XTU 5.2.0.14, did run the E5-1650 v2 at 4.3GHz and under benchmarking, the ASUS STX S/C worked,  and most importantly of all:  the CD ROM Drive showed up in Explorer with a letter and I was able to see it in Explorer.  Apparently the solution is to reinstall Windows.

Windows 10 for Workstations looks to have a lot more features than I need- it's for a good sized office on  a server, sharing files, time cards, remote working & etc.  It's more than 1GB larger than Pro

Not so Wonderful:  I found Windows 10 extremely annoying: based primarily on the presence of Microsoft Edge, which wanted to report every keystroke, tried to prevent loading Firefox, and refused to allow Firefox to be the default browser or DuckDuckGo to be the default search engine.  Deleting all the folders relating to Edge did cure it, but that should not be necessary and there must be huge amounts of junk in the registry. I may have missed it, but it appears the main screen can not be customized easily as in W7- it's that flabby Window rushing by leaving a contrail. May be more time with it  on a faster drive, e.g. the new Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 AHCI could improve it.

Thanks!

BambiBoomZ

[BambiBoomZ · Accepted solution]

UPDATE> Re: DVD Drive works but does not appear in Explorer_Windows 7 > Solved!

Hewlett-Packardians,

Following numerous attempts at two levels of careful registry editing, The DVD drive would not appear and was not accessible in Explorer. This it seems is not an uncommon problem and there are more than ten suggested solutions, all of which are very fussy.  

The problem was solved by cloning the drive of z620_2 to z420_3.  This is possible because the z420 and z620 use the same BIOS and the motherboards are identical except for the features of the z620 motherboard regarding the second CPU riser. The four recovery disks supplied with both systems appear to be identical.

The z620 drive (HP ZTurbo Drive M.2 256GB AHCI) was cloned, using the  original HP Windows 7 Professional OEM disks,  using EaseUs Partition Magic (Technician v11.9) to a mech'l HD (Seagate Constellation ES.3 1TB), that was then file cleaned and registry cleaned using CCleaner, then defragmented and consolidated in Explorer. When cleaned, defragged, and consolidated, the C: drive was reduced from  183GB to 166GB.  The Seagate ES.3 was setup in z420_3 on SATA0, the system started, and using the PM 11.9, was cloned to the z420_3, requiring about 45 minutes.  the DVD drive reappeared and was accessible through Explorer. After setting up XTU to run all cores of the Xeon E5-1650 v2 to run at 4.3GHz, the performance was reduced as compared to the original setup, except for an improvement in the Disk mark from 4858 to 5163.

The cloned, cleaned, and compacted z620_2 C:/ was then cloned to an blank Samsung SM951 M.2 512GB AHCI on a Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe x4 adapter, and mounted in Slot 4 which is the HP ZTurbo Drive slot. The performance was quite good: the Passmark Disk mark was 15,336  as compared to the ZTurbo Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB AHCI score of 13,751 on 10.23.18. The drop in the important Single Thread rating though needs some attention.

This was an effective but inefficient solution and, clearly, the drives of both systems will need to be redone if  the system is changed to Windows 10. 

BambiBoomZ

HP z620_2 (2017) (R8) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) /GTX 1070 Ti 8GB / Samsung SM951 M.2 512GB AHCI + Samsung 970 EVO M.2 NVMe 500GB + HP/HGST Enterprise 6TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface + 2X Mackie MR824 / 825W PSU / Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit (HP OEM) > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)

[ Passmark Rating = 5789 / CPU rating = 16930 / 2D = 704 / 3D= 12438 / Mem = 2881 / Disk = 15336 / Single Thread Mark = 2298 [5.1.21]

HP z420_3: (2015) (R13) Xeon E5-1650 v2 (6C@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid cooling / 64GB (HP/Samsung 8X 8GB DDR3-1866 ECC registered) / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB/ > Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / ASUS Essence STX + Logitech z2300 2.1 / 600W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (HP OEM ) > Samsung 40" 4K

[Passmark System Rating: = 5437 / CPU = 15217 / 2D = 776 / 3D = 10923 / Mem = 2901 Disk = 5163 /Single Thread Mark = 2382 [4.30.21]