CD/DVD drive letter disappears after ejecting.

Question

CD/DVD drive letter disappears after ejecting.

Alexander Gent 0

System Information...

5903277

CD-ROM information...

User's image

Hello Support,

I have 3 drive letters, 2 allocated for physical DVD Drives and 1 allocated for a virtual drive.

If I use the eject command on any of these drives when a disk has been inserted then the drive is ejected and the drive letter disappears.
This behavior also occurs on the physical drives if I press the eject button on the drive.

Before.. 5903277-2

After...

5903277-3

Attempting to reallocate a drive letter in disk management fails...

DISK MANAGEMENT

...and I get this error...

PARAMETER IS INCORRECT

I have taken the following steps to attempt to fix this error...

Run the following commands (as administrator) in a DOS window:

chkdsk c: /f /r

sfc /scannow

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Remove RedFox VirtualCloneDrive.
Remove the following registry keys using REGEDIT:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\dvdfab

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class{4D36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}\LowerFilters

In device manager remove all devices under DVD/CD Rom Drives and then re-scan.

DEVICE MANAGER

Close device manager and re-boot PC.

I am at complete loss as to why this is happening.
How do I fix this problem?

Thank you,

Alexander Gent 0 Reputation points

2026-05-29T07:07:18.4266667+00:00

I fixed the problem, that's if you can call it a fix.
The only solution I could see was to wipe my hard-drive and re-install Microsoft Windows 11.
I have assigned the drive letters for my internal CD/DVD drives as I wanted.
When I insert a disk in the drive it shows up with the volume name, icon and I browse the files.
When I eject that same disk, the drive letter shows up and volume display as empty, as it should.
It is a shame that I had to spend hours to reinstall Windows with all my applications to fix a simple problem.
Also, the disk management works as it should and there are no error dialogs when changing drive letters, even with no media inserted.
So thanks Microsoft for all your help, or lack of.
Carl-L 15,340 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-05-29T13:30:51.4766667+00:00

Hello Alexander Gent,

Thanks for letting me know.

Let monitor it for a while, if this happens again. Please let me know.

2 answers

Your answer

Alexander Gent 0 Reputation points

2026-05-29T07:07:18.4266667+00:00

I fixed the problem, that's if you can call it a fix.
The only solution I could see was to wipe my hard-drive and re-install Microsoft Windows 11.
I have assigned the drive letters for my internal CD/DVD drives as I wanted.
When I insert a disk in the drive it shows up with the volume name, icon and I browse the files.
When I eject that same disk, the drive letter shows up and volume display as empty, as it should.
It is a shame that I had to spend hours to reinstall Windows with all my applications to fix a simple problem.
Also, the disk management works as it should and there are no error dialogs when changing drive letters, even with no media inserted.
So thanks Microsoft for all your help, or lack of.
Carl-L 15,340 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-05-29T13:30:51.4766667+00:00

Hello Alexander Gent,

Thanks for letting me know.

Let monitor it for a while, if this happens again. Please let me know.

Answer 1

Alexander Gent 0

It is not normal behaviour for a DVD drive letter to disappear.
Before Microsoft did it recent updates, and I don't know which one, the problem was not there.
When I inserted a disk with files on it into the DVD drive, it would show up in explorer and I could browse the files.
When I eject the CD/DVD, the drive letter was still there and showed that there was no media inserted.
Error messages states in the above shown screen shots did not appear.
This normal behaviour was in all versions of Windows.

Now when I insert a disk, as previously stated, the drive shows up with files on it.
When I eject the CD/DVD the drive letter disappears completely and there is NO WAY to bring it back even if I insert a new disk in the drive.

So I would like a better answer.
Thank you...

Carl-L 15,340 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2026-05-28T13:29:15.0866667+00:00

Hello Alexander Gent,

It is true that the behaviors you described exists for a while. However, in some recent updates, the system now treats optical drive as removable devices. However, the drive doesn't come back even after reinserting the disk is definitely not normal. I'll see what I can do, I'll keep you updated.

Answer 2

Hello Alexander Gent,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A forum.

Since this is a public forum, we will hide your personal identifiable information, and I have sent that image of yours containing your personal identifiable information in a private message so we can work together to resolve the issue. Also, please check your private message in case you want to share another screenshot to avoid leaking your PII by click on the Private Message button.

As I checked the symptom, it seems to be a normal and expected behavior of Windows for an optical drive, rather than any issue with your OS or drive. These drives will only have a volume when there is a media inserted, so when the media isn't present, the drive won't show up. Try to assign letter to the drive when it is empty will show the "Parameter is incorrect" error due to the lack of volume, which caused by the lack of media. I hope this clarifies.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

Share via

CD/DVD drive letter disappears after ejecting.

2 answers

Your answer