Yesterday was at my customer’s place and the manager reported to me that his laptop’s DVD drive cannot be used. At first I thought that it is the same old complaint on some CD or DVD cannot be read but I was wrong. Once Windows XP has been fully loaded, I opened My Computer and the DVD drive is not there! First thing to check when a CD/DVD drive is not working is to try to eject the drive to see if there’s power. Yeah the drive ejected without problems. Then next step is to check the Device Manager to see if Windows is able to detect the drive in the first place or whether it had any problems with the driver.
True enough, there’s a yellow exclamation mark for the DVD/CD-ROM drives category telling me that there’s something wrong with it. I double click on the drive at device manager and I saw this error message that says “Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39). Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device.”
Microsoft advises to update the driver by going to the Driver tab, and then click Update Driver to start the Hardware Update Wizard. Follow the instructions to update the driver. I did that but doesn’t fix the problem. I’ve even tried to uninstall the drive and then active the “Scan for hardware changes” to install the drive again.
Finally I remembered a similar problem which I’ve experienced when I got my new Acer laptop which is the DVD drive missing from My Computer after uninstalling NTI Media Maker 8 and then installing Nero 9. It is actually the same problem which is DVD drive missing from My Computer except previously the device manager didn’t show any errors but now I got error code 39.
I tried my luck on removing the the UpperFilters and LowerFilters from registry, rebooted the laptop and voila! the DVD drive appears in My Computer!
Here are the steps to remove the UpperFilters and LowerFilters to fix the code 39 error in device manager:
1. Go to run (or hit Win+R), type Regedit and click OK.
2. Expand My Computer in Registry Editor, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
2. Expand SYSTEM, and then expand CurrentControlSet.
3. Expand Control, and then expand Class.
4. Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
5. In the details pane of Registry Editor, on the right side, delete UpperFilters and also LowerFilters.
From the previous case of missing dvd drive and also the unable to install scanner problem, I’ve started to understand that whenever you’ve previously installed and uninstalled any software/driver which later causes an error in Device Manager, you should first try to remove the UpperFilters and LowerFilters. Of course, always backup the original registry key that you’re going to delete using “Export”.
I Just wanna thanks you man, this work on windows 8 ultrabook. demn.. u r awesome
Fantastic…. THX!
I just want to thank you so much for this fix, Windows did an update and my CD/DVD rom drive vanished was not working, did the trouble shoot microsoft suggests and nothing, I ended up formatting, did many save points as i was updating, and then wouldn’t it figure when I ran the last few updates to confirm it was a windows update that did it my Drive was missing again, this time I did a web search, found your site and I have my drive back, THANK YOU again SOOOOO MUCH!!!!
thanks my dear God bless you
Thank :)
holy cow! thanks. seriously. whoa. im impressed.
I had similar problem with error code 52 on windows 7. I tried recommded fix and it solved my problem. Thanks.
IS
The error code i keep getting is code 10. Will this fix resolve that error code as well?
Thanks
Thanks a million. Prior to being guided to your site some or the recommended ‘fixes’ were ridiculous and sounded like they came straight out of the ‘fixall’ manual some tech support outfits seem to use for their bible. Naturally none of the ‘techs’ recommending the ‘fixes’ had ever tried them. Other fix suggestions were straight forward but revolved around the driver itself. of course the problem wasn’t resolved as it had nothing to do with the drivers.
Your solution worked perfectly except there were no ‘upper filters’ to be removed. Only ‘lower filters’ in two places. I’m really dragging right now and would like to get back to to you with a better explanation at some other time. The system I was working on was Windows 7, so the registry format may have been a touch different from yours.
If you’d like an expansion on my ‘findings’, please email. Note the underscore between Im and lar…..(im_lar)
thanks my friend… you are truly greatful,.. :D
many many thanks my friend u make my day & moreover i get a chance to learn new thing from u…….thanks u r now my great friend……if i will have some technical problem in future kindly help me…..god bless u !
Man, you are a genius!! Thank-you so much for posting this! You ROCK!
gs worked and this is the second time it has happened to me and this way worked way easier
worked on windows 7 thanks
This solve my problem, Thanks
Incredible…. I didnt believe that this would solve my problem….and it DID….thanks Ray!!!
thank you.. thank you.. thank you.. sou solve my problem with these cd/dvd error.. thank you.. keep it up.. Raymond for President…
Raymond, you sound like you know alot about computer fixes, so i hope you respond to me… i have this same problem but i have no lower or upper filters to delete under that big long tab…. so what do i do now?……… ok you are my last hope, i want to hear my music and put my pics on cds….. help me raymond! :)
it’s really helped me allot and solved my very big head ache and saved my time allot..
Thanks Brother..
thanx dear
Just want to say A BIG THANK YOU.
I had the same problem with my Acer laptop.
Followed your instructions and now have a working CD drive.
Thx buddy, you have been a great help. I was dying with that problem, you brought me back to life. My computer is my every thing. My gratefulness my friend.
Hay raymond thanks a lot dear! i was near to format my pc but ur solution solved my problem.
i cant express my words for thanks.
Bye dear.
Very many and not required words are there to thank you
it helped me a lot after a long period of time
Hi, i get the code 39 error all the time on different drives mainly sound and camera drives i tried the code 19 but worked but the problem just keeps coming back. does any one know if this will this work for image and sound drives too?
Thanks so much! Had this problem crop up after an install of Windows 7 Home Premium from XP. CD drives worked initially but then stopped. Tried everything and then found your post. I only had Lower filters, but once I deleted that from the registry and then uninstalled and reinstalled the devices again it finally worked!
thanks a lot… sangat membantu..
apakah cadangan asli kunci registri yg tlh dieksport boleh di delete apabila dvdnya telah kembali ???
bisakah cara perbaikan ini digunakan lgi apabila hal yang sama terjadi kembali ???
Thanks man. Tp kog hilang lg ya stlh dilak langkah2 spt juk? Laptopku merk Acer jg. Mhn bantuannya.
yessss my problem is finally solved ! back to gamingg on some of my oldschool games, just installing one now and i hope people still play it ’cause i used to own rofl. anyway
THANKS A LOT!
Had the problem of losing my three disc drives in Windows 7 Ultimate (received as a launch party host)
Followed your directions and deleted lower filters, Afc was the designation in the key. Lower was the only filter showing in the registry entry.
Got my three optical drives back after reboot. Funny how this thing has been around since 95.
Thanks for your article, much better than the telephone advice from the tech where I bought my computer last week (go to google, we are not here to teach you how to fix problems)
I had previously tried DevCon package from a link in Microsoft knowledge base, but had problems with the 64 bit working under Windows 7 Ultimate
Many thanks again
Les
This didn’t fix my code 39. Can’t get it to go away. Nothing I tried will do it. Drive works in linux and booting but not in windows. It’s killing me. Please help!
minta penjelasan, bagaimana laptopku sukar membaca cd/dvd waktu dimasukkan ke cdroom.
terima kasih penjelasannya
koita tota microsoft fixit.
mulla ainaki toimi.
Thanks very much, I solved the problem with your instruction above.
many thanks, it worked. two thumbs up for you…^_^
Was getting a bit frustrated with this problem…Microsoft listed a download fix and it didn’t work..so glad I found this site….you are the man! It worked just like you said it would.
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge!!
it works !!! tnx A LOT !!! on WINDOWS 7 !!!
Thanks so much it work perfectly and I used this on a Dell.
Thanks, your fix worked perfectly.
Hi, I followed everything you said to do, but the one problem is, when i open up my device manager, the DVD/CD drive isn’t even there. And also, when I go into my registry to try and clean out the Upper& lower files, I didn’t have any. Please Help!!
Chris
If fixing the upper and lower filters doesn\’t do the trick, try the Sony DRM rootkit remover then uninstalling cd burning software.
Lost the link where I found this info, sorry.
I have been fighting with this for a while and I can’t figure it out. I have already done everything you said and STILL can not get it to work. Any ideas from this point?
how to enable pendrive (driver) if disable by carry it easy?
your the man! i dont know how to thank you! it worked! you just saved me 75 dollars. thats how much i had to pay to get this problem fixed at a computer store. and it only took me 5 minutes ! thank you again!
Thanks for the solution it worked perfectly
till now dint face this thread
thankyou,in advance;)
thanks alot Raymond ;
but what about (code 10)
hope that i found this artickle long time ago, so i don’t need to reformat my pc :) tq for the information, its very help …
I met with this problem before, missing drive icon in my computer. I used the powertoy TweakUI to display my drive back, but im not sure whether my problem is same as yours.
whats the point of having lower/upper filter in the first place?
hai raymond my dvd/cd rom not working, i saw the error msg says, (LG DVD-Rom HL-DT-ST DVD-RAM GH22NP20) \\\”Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)
Click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter for this device\\\” but troble shooter not working please help me.
please give me a valid license key for bitdefender total security 2009, advance thanks….
I’ve also had this problem many times over the last year and had to do a lot of research initially. The solution was the upper and lower filters. Worked like a treat every time – Thanks Raymond for sharing this with others who might be coming across this for the first time.
Same as information here. I know because I have had this problem.
support.microsoft.com/kb/314060
Thank you Raymond – these investigative remedial tips of yours are so very useful
I’ve dealt with this many times. Mostly this happens because some adware gets in and screws around where it shouldn’t (which is basically any part of your computer lol).
Gotta make sure you do an adware scan also when you get a problem like this. As I said, a lot of times it’s caused by an adware. So if you don’t run a quick scan, it will reset back after a reboot or two.
awesome ray! :)
i’ve had this problem every now and then as well, luckily i remember this way of fixing it;)
should be helpful for others.
thanks Raymond very helpful … I faced this problem before and i had to install a frsh windows
thanx for sharing !!!
thanks