Windows Vista DVD drive disappeared

After a DVD was put into the DVD drive, it whirled for a while and stopped. Then the DVD drive disappeared (from the Computer). I needed to reboot in order to get it back. Why? And is there any way to get the DVD drive without reboot?

 

Scan for Hardware Changes does not work. The DVD RW Drive does not come back into vision. I guess it is because of the DVD zone mismatch. When a DVD of a different zone is inserted into the DVD RW drive, the Vista OS "punishes" the user by shuting down the DVD RW Drive. Reboot is the only way to get it back, so far.

 

I don't think you will find it is Vista. Zone limits are "built into" the DVD drive.

 

Yeap. It's as wired as constraining people from reading an e-newspaper just in the suburbs they bought the newspaper. When they brought the newspaper to another suburb, they were not allowed to read the same e-newspaper.

Not sure if any of you notice that: when you do a Google search in one country, the same criteria entered in another country give a different search result, even at the same time. That's location-based. They detect where you are and restrict you what you can see.

 

I expect that you have set your Google searches to start at your local area. I set Yahoo searches to start in my area (Australia. maybe broader than a US search). If I change my search to "general" it will come up with non-Australian websites as the first hits. I expect it is how you sort your searches.

Matt
Edit: I have seen that that sites or searches are being censored. If you live in the US, references to the current political situation may be, errrm, censored.

 

That's what I did last year. I was planning holiday over the phone with somebody at the other side of the world. We both set search to general on our browser but saw different things! Not just google, but some news websites as well. Local people see differently from those readers from overseas. Try those Aussie news like smh.com.au with a friend in Australia. Other websites like asus, apple, ibm etc, they just move you to your local country's website without hiding the http link. Local-based internet has been a tool to filter what you can see. What's the difference between capitalism and communism?

 

I think you can see that it is not Vista. When connected to the internet, my location is broadcast (Sydney Australia) so advertisements on various websites will come up aimed at Australia and possibly Sydney.

If you go to www.grc.com and do port scanning (ShieldsUP), it will tell you what identification is being broadcast for your connection. Read the section "The text below might uniquely identify you on the Internet ".

Matt

 

Hi Mattman,

Recap a little back... that the DVD drive disappeared from the Computer after a different zone DVD was inserted into the drive, this behaviour happened and in coincidence the computer was running on Windows Vista. What you said to my understanding was that the DVD drive shut down itself and hid behind Windows Vista. Is it what you meant?

If it is truly the case, then Windows XP should encounter the same result, provided the DVD drive zoning is different from the DVD zone. I don't have the environment to test it. Having said that, when I insert a different zone DVD into the DVD drive of a desktop PC, an error message will tell me the DVD is not readable, but the DVD drive is still there. Perhaps different DVD drive brands respond differently when a different zoned DVD is inserted. But to me, this is a guess, and not a conclusive answer.

Anyway, your suggested grc.com is a convenient place to check basic Internet security. Thanks for that. It reveals another isse: it should be the ISP to provide proxy services in order to provide their customers with static IP addresses. If it happens, the customers will be at least shielded off their node address.

 

I can see what you mean. Maybe you are supposed to get a warning that the number of zones have been exceeded, but something goes wrong (drivers?) and the drive "disappears ". It might be set to run the warning in Windows XP or hangs on User Account Control (or needs UAC if you have turned it off).

 

Hi Mattman,

Partially correct. Yes, I believe a warning message about putting in a DVD of wrong zone is more acceptable. But it's not about "exceeding" the number of changes in zones. I experienced in some notebooks that the DVD zone will change from "no zone" t the zone of the first DVD inserted (except an all zone DVD). It's very rude just to shut down the DVD drive, not even telling the OS.

Anyway, I am unsubscribing this thread. Cheers.

 

After 2 months, I thought I might have found the cuase that made the DVD drive disappeared. It could be the iTunes alone (because since updated to iTunes 9.0.1, the problem has disappeared), or in a combination of the HP Photosmart C5200 Series Ssolution Center 10.0.0, that many other people have a similar complaints as well.

See also http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2600 for more information.