A clientsite where I built their custom workstations recently started complaining about their CDROM devices not working, in spite of the fact that I recently reinstalled Windows 10 on one of those workstations using a DVD.
On investigation it turned out Windows 10 wasn't even showing the CD/DVD drive as existing, even though it was there at the BIOS level.
Fixing required moving the SATA plug for the CD/DVD device from an "odd numbered" or "slave" port to an "even numbered" or "master port" as with IDE. Just moving it to another SATA port did nothing. Moving it specifically to a "master" port (the first port on a stack of 2) brought it back to Windows 10.
The other machine still showed the CD/DVD device, but any media/disk put into it was inaccessible - no read permission at all. I tried WMP and VLC with an audio CD and no joy.
Exact same fix. Not just any other SATA port, but specifically a master port.
The 2 affected systems were completely different mainboards and CPUs. A 3rd system, totally unaffected, is running the same version/update level of Win10 with identical hardware to the first machine (which was affected).
Less a question than a bug report which Microsoft's witless 2020 executives will ignore, but maybe somebody else can benefit from when they hit the same problem.
Source link: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/ff602573-9041-4a55-8b8a-885cd98d1a88/magically-disappearing-cdrom?forum=win10itprohardware
