This has been bugging me for a while now but after some Googling I can't even find anyone else with a similar experience. So I may as well try asking here to see if any of the more Win 7 savvy people have a clue.

Thing is, Windows 7 (64 bit ultimate) will randomly lose my DVD drive and one of my USB sticks. By this I mean they are no longer listed in Windows Explorer and can no longer be detected by any other program.

Fixing the issue for the USB stick is easy, unplug it and plug it back in and it's detected again. But I can't do that for the built in DVD drive. To fix that I have to either power down the PC for 5 mins or occasionally when that doesn't fix it, I have to go into the device manager and uninstall all entries under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers section (which is three listings for ATA Channel 0, three listings for ATA Channel 1 and three listings for Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller).

As my DVD drive was manufactured around 2 years prior to Windows 7 being released, I wonder if it's not 100% compatible with Win 7 and thus that's part of the problem?

Any one have any ideas how to permanently fix it (short of buying new hardware as the hardware itself is functioning correctly in Windows XP and in Windows 7 when it is detected).

I've also been trying to work out what could trigger it, but it happens completely at random. Either after the PC is left fully idle for some time, after running ITunes, while playing games through Steam (with no additional DRM), etc.

Shiny rep points for anyone that can help solve what's going on.

Do you have the latest driver for your motherboard and/or chipset installed?
Is your DVD Drive a SATA or IDE drive? If you are only using SATA drives you could check if your BIOS supports AHCI instead of some sort of legacy IDE mode.

Have you tried updating the drive's firmware?

Might be a firmware issue, as Navagon says.

What's the model of the drive?

I got problems with my TDK drive after installing 7, Win7 refused to burn discs as I had flashed the drive with a hacked region 0 firmware, flashing back the official firmware fixed it. The drive had worked fine for years under XP Pro, XP X64, and Vista with the hacked firmware.

Does it happen if you have something using that drive? i.e. keeping the DVD spun up or accessing the USB drive?

If it only happens when it is idle, it could be going into some sort of power saving mode. If you can easily reach the back of your machine, try disconnecting the power instead of just powering down (I have an issue with my laptop where it won't even get to POST unless I have fully removed all power to it) when you try to bring it back up.

Also, check the Event Viewer to see if anything "suspicious" happens before the devices go missing. It may also provide useful information in the event where it does (might give an IO error).

And there is always the chance that it is a virus/trojan (or some super duper DRM :O) that is causing this. Also could be a symptom of bad RAM (but unlikely as you would see other aspects of your machine behaving strangely/getting crashes etc.).

If you go into the management console (right click the computer icon & go manage) then go into disc management, you should see the DVD & USB (assuming both are working at the moment). Try right clicking the USB and assigning a significantly different drive letter (say Z).

I've noticed drive letter conflicts causing this problem before under XP, mostly when another drive has been added after both the optical & usb have previously been used. Say if you put in another HDD, the DVD will notice the drive letter change but unless its plugged in, the USB won't and sometimes tries to steal the letter it had previously

Go to the start menu, type logs and go into view event logs (Event viewer); there go under Windows Logs and System and see if you find any warning or error related to the DVD drive, USB controller or drive controller.

Then also look under Applications and Services -> Hardware events.

Post here what you find there.

A friend also had this problem with a DVD drive and a HDD and it was related to the power supply which wasn't capable of powering the system when the requirements of all drives built up

Way too many people to quote with this forum software, so I'll have to use bold to indicate other people's questions.

Do you have the latest driver for your motherboard and/or chipset installed?

No idea to be honest. I tend to avoid updating motherboards after have one die on me as a result of trying to update it.

Is your DVD Drive a SATA or IDE drive? If you are only using SATA drives you could check if your BIOS supports AHCI instead of some sort of legacy IDE mode.

It identifies itself as a HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH20NS10 ATA Device other than that I can't tell you what it is without pulling it apart (something I'll have to do when I have more time). It also has "Super multi" and "SecurDisc" written on the front.

Have you tried updating the drive's firmware?

If I could find a firmware patch, I'd try. I can't find one.

Does it happen if you have something using that drive? i.e. keeping the DVD spun up or accessing the USB drive?

I don't think so no. At least so far, it's never happened while the drive is in use (although the drive is rarely used), the USB sticks are used constantly as I store all work files on them.

Also, check the Event Viewer to see if anything "suspicious" happens before the devices go missing. It may also provide useful information in the event where it does (might give an IO error).

Nothing related is shown in the Event Viewer at the moment. Next time I notice it's happened I'll have another look, but so far it's never happened while I've been actively looking for it to happen.

I also don't think it's a virus/trojan. At least, Comodo doesn't find any.

If you go into the management console (right click the computer icon & go manage) then go into disc management, you should see the DVD & USB (assuming both are working at the moment). Try right clicking the USB and assigning a significantly different drive letter (say Z).

I assigned specific drive letters to the USB drives and DVD drive a long time ago to avoid problems with the external drives losing their drive letters when plugged in.

Go to the start menu, type logs and go into view event logs (Event viewer); there go under Windows Logs and System and see if you find any warning or error related to the DVD drive, USB controller or drive controller.

None found. Same with the Hardware Events, that's completely blank.

I suppose the power supply could be a possibility, but only if it somehow uses more power for Windows 7 compared to XP as I've used the same hardware with XP for the last two years and never had the problem. Even now when I boot into XP for any length of time, the problem never occurs. So this is definitely Windows 7 specific.

Bump

The driver, not the firmware; chipset drivers reside in the operating system and don't patch the hardware. Updating the chipset drivers is quick and easy (assuming your motherboard manufacturer supplies them on their website), and given your symptoms this is certainly worth trying. This is a SATA drive. If you want to try switching to AHCI mode do note that if your boot partition is on a SATA hard drive you will need to apply the kb 922976 tweak before enabling AHCI in the BIOS. If you're using all of the Comodo Internet Security functionality (Defense+, sandbox, etc.) it's unlikely that something could have slipped through, but you could try doing a free scan with Hitman Pro; it's generally good at finding things other products might miss. I'd definitely try updating the chipset drivers before bothering to hunt for an infection though.

Running the "auto update" tool I found for the motherboard only reveals drivers for the on-board realtek LAN and a BIOS update for the motherboard itself.

I'll check the BIOS next time I boot up to see if AHCI is possible before applying kb 922976, but that's certainly something I could try before updating the BIOS as I really don't want to touch that.

I'll also try running Hitman Pro tonight so I can leave it running while I sleep (in case it's going to take ages like Comodo does.

Thanks for the advice so far =)