Hello everyone,

A lady called me last week and told me that her husband was unable to play his favorite game on CD. The CD/DVD player would not play the CD, and furthermore the optical drive didn’t even show up in the Windows (XP) “My Computer” folder! Windows was not recognizing the CD/DVD drive – as if it had just disappeared into thin air!

In the past three years I have seen this same situation about two or three times and here is the fix:

Windows XP, Vista, 7

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. In the navigation pane, locate and then click the following registry subkey:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
4. In the right pane, click UpperFilters.
   Note You may also see an UpperFilters.bak registry entry. You do not have to remove that entry. Click UpperFilters only. If you do not see the UpperFilters registry entry, you still might have to remove the LowerFilters registry entry. To do this, go to step 7.
5. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
6. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
7. In the right pane, click LowerFilters.
   Note You may not always see the LowerFilters registry entry. I didn’t in this latest fix.
8. On the Edit menu, click Delete.
9. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
10. Exit Registry Editor.
11. Restart the computer. You are done!

Professor Randy says: If your CD/DVD drive icon disappears from your “My Computer” folder, don’t panic! Just follow the steps above and you’ll be playing your CDs/DVDs in no time.