(FIX) DVD Drive Not Found in Windows 7

It troubles us a lot when we dont have access to our frequently used DVD drive. Here i am dealing with the problem of DVD drive missing or not showing up in windows 7. In some cases the dvd drive may not be seen in windows 7 even if you can find it in the BIOS and using the standard driver. There can be many reasons for this problem. Here is a simple fix or solution to it. You can try this when you dont see the DD drive in windows 7.

Type regedit in the windows 7 start menu. The windows 7 registryeditor will open up.
Now go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\.

Now in the right hand pane, delete both UpperFilters and LowerFilters (UpperFilters.bak and LowerFilters.bak entries can be ignored).

Now that would bring back your missing dvd drive in windows 7.

If that dont fix the problem, the next thing to do is to alter the drive letter of the DVD drive.

For this Type Disk Management in the windows 7 start menu and press enter.

You will see the Disk Management windows opening up.

Now right click on your DVD drive in the bottom panel and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Change the drive letter of the DVD drive to some other (If it was H change it to I or some other).

Now Restart Your system. And Your DVD drive should be there. You may now change the DVD drive letter back to the previous one.

How to Clean dirty, smudged or Scratched CD/DVD Properly

The DVD or CD put outside the pouch/cover are likely to get dirty, smudged or scratched. Since the disk surface is very sensitive it is also prone to fingerprints. Data Recovery Rate will be very less from a dirty, smudged or Scratched CD/DVD. Even with the help of the best data recovery software's we might not get the required results. But if we clean the CD/DVD properly we may be able to recover the data in the disk to a good extent. So before we use some data Recovery Software’s we must clean the DVD/CD properly first. So here is how to clean a dirty, smudged or scratched DVD/CD. Most of us clean the Old DVDs or CD just by rubbing it with a soft cloth. This may work some time when the dust can be easily wiped off. But things go bad if the dirt or dust is stubborn. When we wipe the DVD/CD with stubborn dust using a soft cloth it actually damages the DVD or CD more and more. So don’t do it with aged DVDs or CDs.

How to clean a clean a dirty, smudged or scratched DVD/CD Properly

The CD/DVD cleaning process must be carried out carefully.

• First you need to find a container good enough to submerge a DVD/CD completely in it.



• Now take some liquid soap or glass cleaning solution in the container. Make sure that the soap solution you use is not a very strong one i.e. You must not use solutions that are used to clean metal surfaces etc. Hand washing liquids will do.



• Take a little of the liquid soap or cleaning solution in the container (15 – 20 ml) .



• Now pour clean hot water to get a little concentrated soapy solution. The water must be hot in a way that you can drink it. (I said like this because drinking water is the best for this purpose as it will be very clean).



• Dip the DVD/CD into the solution and leave it aside for 5 minutes. Take out the DVD/CD and rinse it with clean water 3-4 times then after.



• After rinsing the DVD/CD with clean water properly, Shake Off the excess water and Let the DVD or CD to dry naturally. You may put it under a fan but don’t try to dry it using any other ways.

You can use the DVD/CD on your system. Now you will have a very good chance of Data Recovery Rate from the disk.

Note:- If you have very important data in the DVD or CD you may seek professional help. I have no responsibility for any data loss caused.

Also Check :

5 Best Tools To Recover Data From Damaged DVD/CD and other Medias

How To Perfectly Protect Your DVD/CD from Future Damages – A Must Read Guide For Every DVD/CD Collectors

DVD, CD and BD media keep their data only for a limited period of time. And the data starts to degrade slowly. It might be possible to get back some files on the DVD’s or CDs but in case of one single big file of some 650 MB or like wise things become hard. Even if a small part of that file gets unreadable we lose the whole file. You might have got errors such as “Cannot copy file: Data error (cyclic redundancy check)“ / “Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk” like wise.

The invasion Flash Drives and portable hard disks have still not affected the market of CDs and DVDs and the latter are still the most widely used storage mediums. Their cheap price is the main factor behind this gain. DVD’s and CDs are cheaper but they lack one defect. DVDs and CDs gradually degrade with time. In the earlier days i used to take backups of my important data to CDs and keep them safely (almost at a dust proof place). I thought that even after long time my data would be safe. My PC’s hard disk used to work 3-5 hours during those days. So i thought that it would be safer to store and Keep the data in CDs rather than keeping on my Hard Disks. But when i tried to read the CD after a very long time but every time it failed. The CDs were not able to read except very few.

But there is happy news for all. There is a way to Protect DVD, CD or BD Medias from future damages. We can still recover the data stored in them very easily.

Thanks to dvdisaster. Dvdisaster will help you to recover the data’s stored in old CDs, DVDs etc. dvdisaster is one nice software that helps us to recover data from DVDs, CDs etc. dvdisaster makes this possible by integrating some error detection and correction codes along with the burned data. So even if some read errors have developed the data will be completely recoverable. The data recovery will be possible even if the DVD, CD or BD gets scratched or gets errors due to its oldness. dvdisaster reads the original DVD or CD and then creates an error correction file which consumes a 15% of additional space. For e.g. if a CD of 700MB of data is taken it needs approx. 105MB of space for creating the error correction file and a 4.7GB DVD file needs an error correction file of approx. 700 MB space. When the DVD, CD or BD get’s scratched or encounter readability problems or errors, then dvdisaster will make use of the error correction file to correctly recover the data from the scratched DVD, CD or BD.

How to Use dvdisaster to Protect DVD,CD or BD

1. First insert the DVD/CD from which needs to be protected.


2. Run dvdisaster and choose the correct DVD/CD and from File click on Select Image and give the destination to save the image file.


3. Again from File Select Parity File and give the location to save the error correction (.ECC) file.


4. Selection the option called Read see in the right pane of dvdisaster. This will take some time so go for a cup of coffee ad relax.


5. After the reading process gets finished click Create option to create the ECC file.

How to Use dvdisaster to Recover  DVD, CD or BD from Read Errors

From the above mentioned steps we have successfully created the error correction file. Now whenever you have read errors with your DVD, CD or BD and not able to copy the files from them properly, just follow the steps below.

1. Run dvdisaster and locate the DVD/CD and click on Read.


2. Now just choose the ECC file present in the DVD/CD and click on Fix. You can burn the image file in ISO extension to a DVD/CD.

What if i haven't created the Error Correction (.ECC) File before ? I have a very old DVD/CD with me.

I am sure at least some of the users (may be most) reading this post will have this question in their mind.

dvdisaster can also be used to recover the contents of a damaged DVD/CD even when if you havent created the error correction (.ECC) file before / if no ECC file is available. Only problem is that the data recovery chances are less without the error correction (.ECC) file

dvdisaster will create an image file by reading the entire disk by skipping unreadable portions / damaged parts and then tries to recover the missing data from the DVD/CD by scanning then repeatedly.

And the best of the best dvdisaster is free and it is available for Windows, Mac OSX,Linux and Unix.

Download dvdisaster

A Best Free Alternative to Nero Software

Nero is very popular software which was released for the purpose of burning DVD’s, CD’s and other medias. The whole Nero Application is a whooping 370.5 MB in size (latest). The latest version included many scarcely used application software’s such as Media Player, Video Editor, Audio Editor, Photo Manager. Etc. but we mostly use Nero to burn the DVD’s, CDs and many of the users rarely use the other unwanted applications that come with the software and most times we wont use them at all. This is mainly due to the reason that there are much better alternatives for such applications too. For e.g. Audacity is a full featured and a nice alternative to the audio editor program that comes with Nero. The version 3 of Nero Software included only the DVD and CD burning feature only. But the latter versions arouse with many bloated stuffs that are mostly not needed by the users. Why a Burning Program should include such bloated applications. This was only the trick used by the manufacturers to sell their newer versions. After installation of Nero software it will eat up to 1.5 GB of our hard disk space simply without any use for us. Of course there are few users that play with those unused stuff that comes with Nero. Nero is not a freeware too. So we need to give our money if we need it to use it as long as we like. But if our purpose in only DVD, CD, Bluray disk… burning why we should unnecessarily install those bloated stuffs on our PC when there are many Free and Sleek alternative Software’s that will do these jobs perfectly?

CDBurnerXP is a sleek and freeware utility that is a best alternative to Nero. While the nero installer is 370.5 MB in size, CDBurnerXP is a tiny 3MB stuff yet powerful. CDBurnerXP will support the burning of DVD, CD, HD DVD’s, Blu-ray etc. It also includes the feature to create and burn ISO’s and support’s a multi language interface.

Main Features of CDBurnerXP   

1. It can burn all kinds of discs.  
2. It supports audio-CDs without or with gaps between the tracks.  
3. Support’s the burning and creation ISO files.  
4. Includes the feature to verify the data after burning process has completed.  
5. It can create bootable discs.  
6. Supports multi-language interface.
7. Simple cover printing, nrg / bin, ISO converter and more!
8. Operating Systems Supported: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista/Windows 7

In fact these are the most needed features that need to be included in a sleek burning program and CDBurnerXP has all. And the best of all, with all these professional features included CDBurnerXP is free for every one including companies. So why don’t we say CDBurnerXP is an excellent Free Alternative for Nero?

Download CDBurnerXP

5 Best Tools To Recover Data From Damaged DVD/CD and other Medias

Almost all of the computer users will have a plenty of collection of DVD's or CD's. Other than any other medium to back up important data we prefer CD's or DVD's due to their easy availability and cheap prices. After prolonged use or keeping them for years, they become unreadable due to the scratches on them. You may have many valuable data in it. Most of the users end up in throwing away their unreadable or corrupt DVD's or CD's. Most probably windows fails or refuses to read and retrieve data from such scratched DVD's or CD's. This is because they consolidate the data into very small area and a scratch will make it unreadable. Dont lose your hope; you can still recover the data from those damaged/Scratched/Unreadable DVD/CD easily and that too without spending any money. Here are some Great Free Utilities to Recover Data from unreadable or scratched DVD's or CD's

1.  IsoPuzzle
   


This is one great utility that tries to recover as much as data from unreadable or scratched DVD's and CD's.

All readable data is taken form the scratched DVD or CD and it is stored as an image file in ISO format. ISO files can be read by various softwares like as WinRar, Nero Burning Rom, Daemon Tools etc.

You just need to specify the " Source " and " Destination " and press the " Start " button and the copy process will automatically start.

If the DVD or CD is severely damaged that even IsoPuzzle can't recover the data, there is also an option to give the time limit for the purpose, so after that the software will automatically stop by its own.

The whole recovery process could take an hour or more. The DVD or CD will be ejected after the recovery process if you have activated the " On completion| Eject " option.



Download IsoPuzzle



2. Unstoppable Copier


Unstoppable Copier is faster than IsoPuzzle, but do not perform as much as IsoPuzzle does.

When windows is unable to copy a file or folder from a unreadable or damaged DVD or CD it will abort the process and deletes the portion of the files copied till now.



Unstoppable Copier continue copying the file from first to the end. Any data which is unrecoverable even after many retries are replaced with blanks. This will help you to really recover every byte of information that can be recovered.







Download Unstoppable Copier

3. CD Recovery Toolbox

  Apart From any other CD/ DVD data Recovery utilities CD Recovery Toolbox is the best out there. This is just because  it is free and due to its high data recovery rates. It is just an awesome CD/ DVD data Recovery  tool.

After installing CD Recovery Toolbox. Start the program and insert your DVD/CD from which the data is to be recovered. If the DVD/CD has been inserted CD Recovery Toolbox will display the contents of the DVD/CD on it's window. Next you need to select a folder location to save the recovered data from the DVD/CD. On the next step select the Folders and Files you want to be recovered. You can select the entire DVD/CD to recover if you want. But doing this will take a lot of time for the data to be recovered. So it would be wise to select only the important folders and files that you need the most. Now press the Save button Finally. 

CD Recovery Toolbox can recover data from different media such as CD, DVD, HD DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.

Download CD Recovery Toolbox




4. CDCheck

CD Check is another great utility that will recover the data from Damaged/ Unreadable/Scratched DVD/CD easily. Cd check is made to detect the errors on damaged DVD/CD's and recover them. It checks for the corrupted data on the DVD/CD's and will show the corrupted ones to you. CDCheck is a Shareware Utility but it is free for Personal Use. Get a free license for CDCheck from here.




Download CDCheck





5. Dead Disk Doctor

Dead Disk Doctor is from Russia. This tool will try to read the damaged part of DVD/CD and will try to recover it if it can't read the data the software will automatically replace those portions with random data. Since replacing data DVD/CD with random data could corrupt it, this tool is more useful if you have some DVD/CD or other medias with audio or Video content in it to be Recovered. So you will still be able to recover most parts in the DVD/CD even though small portions may get skipped. 

Download Dead Disk Doctor

All the 5 Utilities are Free and offers great value for recovering important data from damaged DVD's/CD's.

[Solution] Restore Missing DVD/CD drive (" Error code 19 " [ Fix ] )/ Get back the Accidentally Deactivated DVD/CD drives

When you have opened the 'My Computer' or Windows Explorer the DVD/CD drive has got disappeared!. when you peeped into the 'Device Manager' it is seen that there is some serious problem and the entries have been marked with the yellow exclamation mark. When selecting the 'Properties from the context menu of the particular drive and error code is reported saying "Error code 19". Here is the solution to get the DVD or CD drive back.

Just editing the Windows registry a little bit will solve this problem.
Press [Win] + [R] (or select Run from start menu)and type 'regedit'.
Go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.

In the right pane delete the "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" values. Just select it and press [Delete] key and confirm. Now restart your system you will get your DVD/CD drive back in My Computer.