Itunes makes my CD/DVD Drive Disappear!
Posted by: wizardcreations on: January 27, 2008
I have had people talking to me about how their CD/DVD drive isnt visible in windows explorer any more just after they have installed itunes onto their vista PC. There is a simple fix for this other than the extreme option of restoring your machine to factory settings.
What itunes does is it changes the upper-filters in the registry key for your CD/DVD drive so that windows doesn’t recognise it anymore so it wont be displayed in windows explorer.
BEFORE you do this please make a system restore point, you can make one of these by selecting “system restore” in Start > Accessories > System Tools.
All we need to do to fix this is to delete the upper filters from our CD/DVD drive registry key and re-boot so that windows then remakes at start-up.
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Press the start button and in the search bar at the bottom of the start menu type “regedit”
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Click on “regedit.exe” in the search results and then give permission when windows asks you to open the registry editor.
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On the tree view in the left side of the registry editor find “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE” and maximise this
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The in HKEY LOCAL MACHINE maximise SYSTEM
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in SYSTEM maximise CurrentControlSet
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In CurrentControlSet maximise Control
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in Control Maximise Class
In the class tree their should be a list of keys with very long names (example: {0475BB51-5A02-4EE0-B36C-29040FAD2650}) click on the first one under Class and look to the right panel their should be information about that key and you need see if that key says “CD/DVD drives”, keep checking each key in the class tree until you find that.
Now once you have found the CD/DVD drives key in the right panel their should be upper-filters and lower-filters, delete these (note: there might be two lower and upper filters with the second set having a .bak extension make sure you don’t delete these if you do). once you have deleted these close the registry editor and re-boot.
Your drive should now be visible as windows makes a new set of lower and upper filters for the CD/DVD drives registry key.
Thanks for reading
21 Responses to "Itunes makes my CD/DVD Drive Disappear!"
April 21, 2008 at 12:50 am
Linda:
I have the exact same issue with iTunes and Vista. Did you get any responsed or fix suggestions?
Thanks
JRF1
June 11, 2008 at 5:45 pm
I had the same problem so I took Itunes out, never liked it anyway, as I don’t own an Ipod, so I burnt on to CD and ripped back off!
Now I use napster till I can find a solution!
September 2, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I’m afraid Apple is just terrible when it comes to software development as well as support. I mean, this kind of thing should never happen.
September 4, 2008 at 12:25 am
Same issues, I’ve just been dealing with it. I delete the upperfilters key, remove the CD/DVD from the device manager and have it reinstal, then reinstall/repair itunes.
It works great until I have to restart the computer (which I rarely do). This is a DELL computer, I cannot believe that everyone is having this problem. Does anyone here with this problem use video game downloading services, or daemon tools? There has to be some way around this.
September 20, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Here is the fix!! After spending hours and trying everything out there. I came across the correct fix:
follow this link
http://www.gearsoftware.com/wiki/index.php?title=CD/DVD_drives_disappear_after_installing_iTunes
September 22, 2008 at 10:46 pm
It may be a problem of incompatability with itunes and your disc drive. do you have a matshita ujda760. i was told that i had to use a different music program to burn cds. they removed some filters so that my disc drive will show up but i have to use roxio to burn cds .
October 9, 2008 at 4:50 pm
If you’re experiencing the “Registry settings won’t let iTunes burn” popup, you can fix it like this:
1. Download the latest GEAR drivers (ftp://downloads.gearsoftware.com/updates/windows/drivers/Driver_Installer_x86_x64.exe) and install them.
2. Open regedit, and navigate to the same key listed above. Find the item called ‘UpperFilters’ and right click it, and choose Modify.
3. In Modify, type (without quotes) “GEARAspiWDM”. This should be the only item in your UpperFilters.
4. Reboot your machine. Upon reboot, your CD drives should be in Explorer, and iTunes will no longer create this popup.
Like the fix? Need additional help?
http://www.pcwatchdogs.com
October 26, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Wills – i did not find asf.exe on my xp system. This is a problem for windows xp also. very frustrating that I can’t have both at once. my roxio 9 also lost the drives. I open disc copy and there is no hardware to copy from or to.
December 3, 2008 at 9:06 am
I have same problem on my Dell XPS system. You are one of the only places that have this resolution posted. Apple, Microsoft, and Dell refuse to support their products and are all too lazy to find a solution to have Vista and iTunes play nice together.
December 10, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I am having the same problem as everyone else, but please help… i don’t know what high and low filters are. I went through all of the steps and got stuck at the h/l filters. What do they look like?
Thx,
Star
December 10, 2008 at 9:48 pm
i found it, and my cd/dvd is working properly. However, i cant use itunes, or the same prob happens all over.
December 24, 2008 at 11:57 am
This is a problem for xp too.
Installing the latest GEAR drivers seems to have automatically altered my upper filters value. This still does not solve the problem though.
December 30, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I have done all these things that everyone has suggested. NOTHING seems to actually work. Even if you get one of them to work, it seems that upon reboot you lose it anyway… I am so upset since I can not even back up my itunes library…
January 18, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I tried the above fix, but to the right of the maximized “class” file, I don’t see a key that says cd/dvd on it!
I’m SO livid right now. This should have never happened, but since it HAS Apple SHOULD HAVE FIXED IT BY NOW!!!!!
I have 3800 songs in itunes that are STUCK there!!!
January 22, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Jonna, Email us at sales@captive-8-media.co.uk we can assist you further there.
February 13, 2009 at 1:52 am
iTunes does not work with CD/DVD.
Internet always has so many problems that I can’t even download files. Nothing works.
I try to work iTunes CD/DVD and it says. “Disc Recording not Found”
Lee
February 14, 2009 at 2:26 pm
I have the reverse problem. When I try to UNINSTALL itunes, my CD/DVD drives disappear. I am running Win XP on an older Dell and never had a problem until I wanted to move itunes to an external HD. I tried Wills fix (see post #8) but the afs.sys file does not appear in Win XP. I either leave it or keep hunting. Help!!
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February 22, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Yeah that worked in terms of bring the drive back but now every time I open iTunes an error message pops up.
“The registry setting used by the iTunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall iTunes.”
When I reinstall iTunes the Upper filter returns and we are back to square one.
Is there anyway to have both working as they should or even a way of turning the CD & DVD burning function of iTunes off so that the annoying error message won’t pop up every time I open iTunes.
Thanks