Fix Hard Drive Or DVD Not Showing Up In Windows 7

Martin Brinkmann
Jan 16, 2009
Updated • Jun 5, 2014
Windows, Windows 7
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28

Windows 7 Beta is very stable. There are only a handful of beta testers that are reporting problems with the new operating system. Two of the problems will be addressed in this article. The first is experienced by users who created a dual boot system to run Windows Vista and Windows 7 on the same computer while the second deals with missing DVD drives in Windows 7.

Windows 7 will not assign a drive letter to the Windows Vista partition by default. Some say this is on purpose while others think that it is a bug. There is however an easy fix to access the data on the Vista drive in Windows 7.

Tap on the Windows-key, enter diskmgmt.msc and hit the enter-key afterwards to open the Disk Management interface in Windows 7.

You should see all the hard drives and partitions of the computer system. The partition containing the Windows Vista system should be without drive letter.

Right-click on the partition in the lower half of the screen and select Change Drive Letter And Path. Now click the Add button and assign a drive letter to the partition. The Windows Vista partition will now be visible in Windows 7.

A DVD drive not showing up in Windows 7 can have various reasons. One of the more common ones is if Windows 7 64-bit is installed on the computer. The 64-bit edition of Windows 7 verifies the digital signature of hardware drivers. If a driver cannot be verified it will be shown with a yellow exclamation mark in the device manager.

A quick workaround is to press F8 during boot to turn off digital signing. A permanent solution would be to disable the check of digital signatures completely:

1. Press Windows R, type regedit and press enter.

2. Open the Registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

3. In the right pane, right-click UpperFilters, and then click Delete.

4. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.

5. In the right pane, right-click LowerFilters, and then click Delete.

6. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.

7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

There is another reason why a DVD drive may not show up. Windows 7 may only display it in its interface if a disc is inserted in the drive. A drive without disc may not be displayed at all.

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Comments

  1. Dave Af said on February 4, 2013 at 11:24 am
    Reply

    I have a strange issue with windows 7 and cd’s with mp3 files on them ‘cd’s was made years back on vista or xp or w.e at that time and slower speed disk but some are 12x and the contents dont show up when insert disk in windows explorer and when check properties of the drive it shows 0 used and 0 space …..which in itself makes no sense at all

    anyway it dont prompt to format as would for a blank cd and I know the cd wasnt blank

    so I went to the format stage and first thing noticed was the top line shows ;;space of format is like 27.2 mbs …..like what the heck…as if a 650mb cd can only get that little space to store things so its obvious it has something on it and isnt showing up the contents

    stranger yet….I say screw it and proceeed to format the disk ;’to see what the heck would hapen actually and it said its gonna take a long time etc an it was taking ages so I canceled (opened the drawer even) and then closed the drawer back up and was gonna look again and then weirder yet….the prompt showed up this time askin if wanna play songs or open folders etc ….SO tryin to format a cd is the only way it is letting me actually see the contents on some cd’s …others all work fine ‘any with mixed files on are all fine….seems to be just the cd;s that I wrote all cd’s on and collected them for years and have thousands on cd’s and I have done this process on about 5 cd’s now with same results…..

    it cant find contents i got to format cd and see the ;format size is weird …never ever size it would be for an empty cd and each time I format and wait and it gives me an erroor it cane format it and each and every time It pops up the thing it found the files ‘as if auto play kicks in ONLY after i attempt a format on the cd

    any clue what would cause such an odd thing to hapen??

    use windows 7 home premium and nearly brand new install ‘3 weeks old

  2. Anonymous said on January 8, 2013 at 6:19 am
    Reply

    I have primary sata 250 GB 2ith 3 partition. Secondary sata 2TB with 2 partition. After windows 7 Ultimate installation, I could not find secondary SATA drives. Device manager shows both the drives. I tried with install and uninstall operation with 2nd SATA. But could not got the tings done. Help needed.

  3. Tahseen said on November 3, 2012 at 12:59 am
    Reply

    Thanks alot . It is perfectly good advice.

  4. Ajin said on September 24, 2012 at 6:27 am
    Reply

    It Works ! , Thanks .

  5. AbiliTV said on September 18, 2012 at 8:53 pm
    Reply

    Wanted to add my THANKS for you providing this help. LMAO silly windows 7 for the first time gave my old drive letter to my SATA drive to another device. Goofy thing.

    But, thank a ton for your awesome help. :)

  6. ALi said on September 4, 2012 at 4:33 pm
    Reply

    Thanks guys.. that’s good stuff really helpful.

  7. kaye said on September 5, 2011 at 11:01 am
    Reply

    I couldn’t find the LowerFilters on the right pane. :( Please help me… ASAP, if possible.

  8. jad said on July 29, 2011 at 11:15 pm
    Reply

    Thank you, easy work around

  9. Don said on July 13, 2011 at 5:47 pm
    Reply

    Did not work for me. :(
    I’ll try playing with the hardware

  10. Anonymous said on June 25, 2011 at 9:14 am
    Reply

    its Working Thank You..

  11. Mohamed Jafy said on April 20, 2011 at 3:07 pm
    Reply

    Thanks really works

  12. Mike said on April 3, 2010 at 8:17 pm
    Reply

    I removed the registry entry for the upper filter, but this did not fix the problem. My DVD drive disappears after a minute of idle time. The only way to make it return is to open/close the drive door on my laptop. Another issue is that now iTunes is giving me a registry error about a missing drive. I tried to reinstall iTunes but it doesn’t fix it. Any further advice would be appreciated.

  13. arifa said on March 12, 2010 at 4:22 pm
    Reply

    hey……i had a similar problem for days…….Thank you Thank you so much
    May God bless you

  14. Rovan said on February 14, 2010 at 7:27 am
    Reply

    Had similar problem with DVD drive disappearing after updating iTunes on Windows 7. Did the suggested registry deletions and the restart, and the drive was back. Did – however – have to do a repair on iTunes in order to stard importing CDs again.
    Thanks, very helpful advice

  15. lala lala said on February 4, 2010 at 8:35 am
    Reply

    I had this problem and the registry fix didn’t cut it. But with help I got a solution.

    The fix was to simply plug the drive into a different SATA slot on the motherboard. Apparently windows (or maybe it’s the mobo) doesn’t like it when certain devices are mixed on the same channel. What worked for me was to make a non-booting sata drive the ch. 2 master and the DVD drive the ch. 2 slave.

    Good luck.

  16. jay said on January 16, 2010 at 6:41 am
    Reply

    i can’t see the upper and the lower filters anywhere….

  17. Typical Idiot Fan said on October 28, 2009 at 3:19 am
    Reply

    This same issue appears to be not just for Windows Vista partition but also for Windows XP partitions and, I’m guessing, older versions as well. Thanks for the fix! I had all my old files on this drive, even though it hasn’t been used as the master boot drive in years!

  18. Madhu said on October 22, 2009 at 7:15 am
    Reply

    Thank u very much…it worked perfectly..

  19. julien said on August 22, 2009 at 12:19 am
    Reply

    i cant see lower filters anywhere, only upper

  20. BlackNinjaVirus said on July 29, 2009 at 3:26 pm
    Reply

    I’m just glad Windows 7 is free.
    I don’t wanna pay the $400.00, if I don’t have too.

  21. Windows 7 said on July 12, 2009 at 6:08 pm
    Reply

    You can check out this link.

  22. .............. ............ said on January 27, 2009 at 10:06 am
    Reply

    great thanx its really working

  23. Playa said on January 22, 2009 at 1:49 pm
    Reply

    Now that was helpful :) Thanks:)

  24. JF said on January 16, 2009 at 1:51 pm
    Reply

    I love the look and feel of Windows 7 but one think happen to me, my second sata hard drive is not showing in windows 7 and it just disappear from the list in the bios too.
    And after returning on Vista is not there too, i have to unplug and replug it.
    So i uninstall windows 7.
    I try with the build 7000 64 bits and 32 bits.

  25. What is Microsoft Windows? said on January 16, 2009 at 1:42 pm
    Reply

    Don’t forget the MP3 issue: the current build of Windows 7 has been known to erased the first few seconds of all MP3 files found on the computer. It seems that it tries to fill in missing metadata in the files, however, instead of appending the data properly to the MP3 header at the beginning of the file (which would make the file larger) it simply overwrites the first few seconds of music with the metadata (which results in a file of the same size). There is a fix available, actually it was known from previous betas and it is surprising that MS did not apply the patch to the current build.

  26. VD said on January 16, 2009 at 12:12 pm
    Reply

    Have to admit I am content so far with Win 7.
    Took some time but finally even got drivers for my old webcam which didnt work propperly under xp ;). One thing I do find strange though. When watching videos from hdd I recognised windows trying to access my dvd drive every now and then (at least it does give a sound as if reading though no dvd is inside).

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