How To: Fix Disappearing DVD/CD-ROM Drives In Windows Vista Or In XP(Error Code 39)
Sometimes you get the following error in Windows Vista or XP Device Manager on the DVD/CD-ROM drive.
“Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)”
Because of this error, the DVD/CD-ROM drive did not show up in My Computer and you cant burn CD/DVDs or read any CD/DVDs and has a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager.To fix this error, first try to update the driver from the Device Manager. To open Device Manager, right-click My Computer on your Desktop, and then on the Hardware tab, select the Device Manager button.In the Device Manager window, identify the CD or DVD drive item (with Yellow exclamation mark), right-click on it and select Update Driver.Then follow the screen instructions to update the device driver and finally restart your PC.
If updating the DVD/CD-ROM driver in Windows Vista/XP does not resolve the problem, it indicates that there is a problem in the registry. To fix this problem, you may have to remove a few keys from the registry.For this follow these instructions:
- Close all open programs
- In the Windows Start menu, select Run and type “regedit” in the Run dialog box.
- Press Enter or click OK to open the Windows Registry Editor.
- In the Registry Editor, locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
- There will be many such entries, so check the (Default) value, which should contain “DVD/CD-ROM“.
- This folder is the DVD/CD-ROM Drive Class Description in the registry. Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.
UpperFilters
LowerFilters
UpperFilters.bak
LowerFilters.bak
- If any of the above keys given in the above step are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete
- After deleting the keys, close the Registry Editor and reboot your computer.
Open My Computer and check to see if your CD or DVD drives have returned. You may also want to open Device Manager and verify that the yellow exclamation and error code on the CD or DVD drive is gone.
Important:
- After removing these registry keys and rebooting, it may be necessary to reinstall any CD or DVD recording applications.
- Be careful while working with the Windows registry editor because changes done to the Windows Vista/XP registry using the Registry Editor are irreversible and mistakes can leave you with more problems than when you started. Therefore, it is recommended that you make a backup of the registry before proceeding with the changes.
Another Method:
Just download and import this registry file to fix the problem
Fix for Code 39 error with DVD/CD-ROM drives in Windows XP or Vista
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Written by Tony on February 14th, 2009 with
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