Optical drive disappearing in Windows

Confused Stu · 22 Feb 2015 at 16:25

I've been trying to track down an issue on my PC for the past couple of weeks, and I've had no success - so I'm asking for some help.

I've put this in General Hardware as I don't know if it's an optical drive issue, a Windows issue, or a motherboard one.

In December, I changed motherboard & CPU (from 2600k+P8P67 Pro to 4790k+Z97X Gaming 5). A week or two later, I noticed my optical drive (LG BH10LS38) wasn't showing in Windows. Rebooted and it reappeared, thought nothing more of it. A little while back I realised that the drive actually disappears about 5 minutes after booting into Windows - no disconnection noise, drive just disappears and Device Manager shows it is no longer connected.

The drive, SATA and power cables have been running quite happily in this system for about 4 years, using Windows 7 originally, and Windows 8.1 Pro for the past 6 months or so.

I've tried:
- Swapping to a different SATA cable
- Moving to a different SATA port
- Two different BIOS's (F5 and 'Beta' F6e)
- Two different LG BH10LS38's, and an LG GGW-H20L, all on latest firmware revisions
- Altering Power Options in Windows to not allow Hard Drives to sleep
- The couple of Registry fixes that Google suggests for optical drives not showing in Windows 8.1, such as adding the registry entry “HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\atapi\Controller0″ /f /v EnumDevice1 /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001 and deleting a couple of others
- Repair Install of Windows 8.1 Pro

None of which has done anything to dent the issue, the drive shows up when I first boot into Windows but disconnects within 5 minutes.

Has anyone run into anything like this before and found a solution? Currently I need to reboot every time I want to use the optical drive, which is getting annoying despite the fact I don't use the drive very often. Any help/advice gratefully received.

Jinxter · 22 Feb 2015 at 16:48

Maybe the fault is with your optical drive?

biuro74 · 22 Feb 2015 at 16:51

If your Windows is not legal (yes, sometimes you might not be aware of it = I'm best example of it), just try some live distro of Linux and see if drive disappears there. So you'll get an answer, I think.

malachi · 22 Feb 2015 at 16:55

I put it down to the optical drive. You have done enough tests to rule out everything else.

Confused Stu · 22 Feb 2015 at 17:41

Jinxter said:
Maybe the fault is with your optical drive?

malachi said:
I put it down to the optical drive. You have done enough tests to rule out everything else.

That's what I was leaning towards, except I've now tried three different drives, one of which was a different model - two BH10LS38 and a GGW-H20L. The drives work perfectly in another PC, but all produce the same issue in this one, which makes me think it can't be the drives.

biuro74 said:
If your Windows is not legal (yes, sometimes you might not be aware of it = I'm best example of it), just try some live distro of Linux and see if drive disappears there. So you'll get an answer, I think.

Definitely running a legit version of Windows, but I might try another OS just to see if it's an OS issue. I'll dig up a live distro and give it a shot - thanks for the suggestion. Any reason you're thinking dodgy Windows = optical drive issues? Just wondering if you can point me in the direction of more info in case it's the same issue as I'm seeing.

Jinxter · 22 Feb 2015 at 17:45

Have you tried a different power connector to your optical drive?

Confused Stu · 22 Feb 2015 at 17:57

Jinxter said:
Have you tried a different power connector to your optical drive?

Thinking about it, I haven't tried a different power connector yet - I will do once the Linux has downloaded and I reboot so I can burn it to a disc. Annoyingly, the drive happily ejects and closes with the button so definitely has power, but Windows just won't see it. Grrr!

varkanoid · 22 Feb 2015 at 18:36

Have you checked its on the latest firmware?

Confused Stu · 22 Feb 2015 at 18:59

varkanoid said:
Have you checked its on the latest firmware?

All three drives I've used have been running the latest firmware, and each has been working perfectly on other computers (where I swapped them out from). I've also tried the latest stable and beta BIOS's for my motherboard - same issue.

Just tried without Intel RST installed - drive still drops out after a few minutes. I'll give the Linux live CD a try tomorrow not, dinner and Top Gear coming up this evening (plus I've spent all day on this, and I think the wife is losing patience with my disappearing!).

chippy08 · 22 Feb 2015 at 19:13

I had this problem the other week drive would disappear when i enter windows so changed sata cable unplugged power plugged it back in and its been fine ever since.

postmanfw · 22 Feb 2015 at 20:49

Seen it before on xp..clean install sorted it (not repair one)

pryere · 23 Feb 2015 at 11:51

I suspect the drive has gone, replace. How often do you use it?

zola25 · 23 Feb 2015 at 11:55

I have a similar problem since switching from Z68 to Z97 (clean install). I've found that uninstalling the Intel RST and switching the driver back to msahci resolves the problem completely. When you uninstalled RST did you also check the driver itself reverted to the MS one?

I was using earlier RST drivers on Z68 that did not cause this issue, but unfortunately that version is not compatible with Z97. I've actually reinstalled the RST driver now as I value the performance gain over the need to regularly access the optical drive. If you leave a disk in the optical drive does it still happen?

ED209 · 23 Feb 2015 at 12:48

I had a issue where a laptop did the same thing.

it was down to windows power saving, changed to high performance and the issue went away, this was running windows 8 at the time

Confused Stu · 27 Feb 2015 at 08:53

Just to put this thread to bed (in case anyone searching finds it later on), I think Zola25 was on the right track as I went P67 to Z77 to Z97 and the issues only came up once on Z97. However, while trying to remove the Intel RST drivers, I ended up breaking my RAID0 (for my 2 "Games" drives), and then while trying to fix that, I ended up breaking my Windows installation and my PC BSOD'ed while booting.

At this point, I admitted defeat, installed a fresh version of Windows (complete with Intel RST) and all the drives are working perfectly as expected. Basically, don't actually know what caused the issues I was having, but a Windows re-install fixed them.

Thanks for your help everyone, it was genuinely appreciated.

postmanfw · 1 Mar 2015 at 15:55

Glad you got it sorted

Always best to do a clean install when changing motherboard even though you can get away without it sometimes

zola25 · 2 Mar 2015 at 11:38

Glad you got it sorted OP. I tried a clean install but the problem persists for me. My optical drive is pretty old now though, and I can live it requiring a restart for the occasions I do need to use it.