Windows 7 Missing hard drives/partitions and optical drives

[loathe]

Missing optical drives

OK so you have lost your DVD/CD drive after installing Windows 7 Beta. Heres how to fix it:

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

Apparently it seems that this is an age old fix for even XP systems. If you venture to the registry key above by doing the following steps:

1. Click on the start menu.
2. In the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.
3. Maximize the HKLM and then go ahead and browse until you reach the key listed above.
4. In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
5. Restart Windows.

As always, no warranty is implied here, and you edit the registry at your own risk. You might want to make sure you have a good backup prior to doing any registry editing.

Sometimes on 64bit machines the problem is because the drivers are not signed. There are 2 things you can try

1. Hitting f8 on start up, and choosing disable driver signature enforcement.
2. Running this command as admin in command prompt:

bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS

This will hopefully stop Windows warning you the drivers are not signed and let you use them.

Missing hard drives/partions

So you have set up a dual boot and cant find your XP/Vista drive/partition?
This is caused because by default they both have "C" as the drive letter and they are conflicting. Easy fixed you just need to give your old drive a new letter.

Right click Computer and click Manage. On the left click Disk Management and find your XP/Vista partition and give it a new letter there by right clicking it and choosing Change drive letter and paths... You can give it any letter you want provided its not already in use. Should appear straight away.

Good Luck!