Simply put.

Got xp with service pack 2

Got Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-111D ( bought 2 months ago)

Which was working, until it dispappeared from the My Computer Screen.

Now i can open/close it and use it as boot cd.

Got the crazy ' i am missing driver' icon on it in decive manager screen

Done so far. 1.installed new drivers then rebooted didnt work. 2. uninstalled then reinstalled drivers but didnt work. 3. uninstalled allowed plug and play/ search for driver and that didnt work. and so........

download so far from the pionner website drivers DVR 111D_FW106EU and 129EU. Neither work.

tried to reinstall the driver for graphics card geforce 4 mx440 with agp8x which while successful didnt fix the problem!!!!

Errorr message comes up saying that available target has not been found

with a dos like screen ( technical details arent great hence why i am here....its black screen with the looks of Dos about it) saying

/// ODD firmware update utility ver2.37A

Available target is not found.


So the question is this.....how do i fix it?

A DVD drive needs no drivers in XP. Or rather XP has its' own drivers.

Try uninstalling the drive (not the drivers) and reboot. This will force XP to reload the drivers.

To uninstall the drive right click it in the Device manager and choose Uninstall.

been there and done that.

what i get is that it recognises that the device is there but still no fix to the problem

Other than the fact that it is not listed under My Computer does the drive work OK? Does it recognize disks inserted?

See if you can operate it via Disk Management.

that would be a negative on that front too.

it doesnt read anything. bar when i put xp in as if to boot from cd.

not sounding good?

not knowing much about computers i have tried to break this down to areas why it is broken

1.it is windows xp...something is missing or broken. why i dont know? nor do i know if this would have an impact on the drive.

2. its the motherboard....not too sure about this one either..kinda goes along the same lines as above.

3 its the dvd drive..is it broken..i dont think so as why would it read the cd when i boot is up. this also applies to the cabels to the drive.

other ideas?

If you feel comfortable editing the registry, here are some steps:

Click the Start button, click Run. In the Open box, type regedit and then click OK.
Click the plus sign (+) next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Click the plus sign (+) next to SYSTEM.
Click the plus sign (+) next to CurrentControlSet.
Click the plus sign (+) next to Control.
Click the plus sign (+) next to Class.
Click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.

Once here click File in the upper left corner and choose: Export (this key)
Export to your Documents as a backup. If needed you can go back to this file and Import it back.

Then:

On the right hand side of the window, click UpperFilters.
Click Edit on the menu bar.
Click Delete, and then click OK.
On the right-hand side of the window, click LowerFilters.
Click Edit on the menu bar.
Click Delete, and then click OK.
Click File, and then click Exit. Restart the computer normally

what would that do?

to be honest i a not sure what i am doing!

would reinstalling xp adn then the driver for the geforce 4 mx440 fix the problem. obviously i would lose everything else on the c: drive but end result is to get the dvd drive back?

No third party drivers are required for removable media drives in XP.

Your graphics drivers have no bearing here.

The above registry edit is a common fix to Removable media drives not showing in My Computer.

It corrects a registry corruption caused mostly by burning software.

It is far less drastic then reinstalling XP.

I doubt that re-installing XP would help here. The drive itself could be the problem. As it is relatively new there must be a warranty.

Anyway try the registry edit first.

Thank you!

it works.

Did that thing with registry and now it appears in the my comp screen and no longer is it missing the driver in device manager.

So final questions. why did it happen?

Usually that registry setting is altered by third party burning software.

In default XP there are no Upper nor Lower Filters on that registry key.

Some third party burners put limits in there and one side effect is the disappearance of the drive from My Computer.