My PC no longer recognises my DVD drive

[jimbot 07]

I have an atapi dvd w dh16w1p ata DVD drive, it worked fine for a while when I got the PC, then it started playing up a bit, it would not detect a new disc being put in unless I rebooted the PC with the disc I wanted to play in (it would only read the disc that was in the drive when the PC was booted), and even then it would not autorun and I had to manually select 'Autorun' to get it to open.
Then, while installing drivers for a webcam I recently bought, upon a reboot, the drive no longer appeared in the 'computer' window (Im using Vista home premium).
So I went into Device Manager, and it showed up in there, but had the little yellow triangle with the exclamation mark over it. When I clicked on it, it said that there was a problem with the driver, and that it could be corrupt. I clicked on the 'look for solutions' button, and it said windows was searching for a solution, but then it just stopped. So I went to the driver tab and selected to update driver, it came back and said that the most up to date driver was already installed.
So then I selected 'Disable device', then I re-enabled it again.
Then I selected 'Uninstall Driver' thinking that it would then give me the option to reinstall it again, but it has now disappeared completely from device manager!!
Does anyone know how to get it back again and maybe re-install the drivers?
Thanks!!

[greenalien]

Firstly, some webcam drivers - Logitech are notorious - have compatibility issues with other hardware.
Second, you should be able to get the DVD driver back by doing a 'repair install' of your operating system, as the ATAPI DVD driver is standard in Windows.
Alternatively, restarting your PC should start the 'found new hardware' wizard and you may be able to reload the driver by allowing the wizard to search online.

[benwoodcock]

but he almost definetely cant do a repair install withoiut a dvd drive can he!

Check it is all plugged in correctly

[peterb]

If all the drivers have beenremoved (de-installed - they will be on the PC) it might be worth powering down the PC - disconnecting the drive, rebooting, then powering down again, reconnecting and then rebooting. Windows might then re-detect the drive and re-install the drivers. (I am assuming that the bios is detecting the drive at start up - if it isn't then the problem lies with the drive and its connections)

[killie99]

Follow the instructions here for editing the registry to recover your missing drive :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

[Angry_Logan]

Windows Vista's well known to do this, happend to my family pc a few times, I just blasted it through my systems recovery partition but if you have a recovery disk and your sure bios is picking it up cant u just boot it up from the CD-rom and do a clean sweep or run it in safe mode?