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DVD Drive "recognized" as USB Mass Storage Device

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Omsion

Member
Joined
Mar 6, 2006
Windows Vista. Laptop is a Toshiba Protege R500, have no idea what submodel it is (was a gift, originally bought in Asia) and what the actual hardware is.

At some point (don't remember exactly when, since I never actually used the drive, and had actually disabled it via Device Manager), my DVD drive failed to be recognized as such, and Vista identifies it as a generic USB Mass Storage Device and attempts to install it as one, which fails miserably.

I can't manually install it as a optical drive since the driver install prompt only list USB storage drivers as choices.

So the main question:
Is there a way to force installation of drivers that are somewhat appropriate?


Finally, and interestingly, this has also persisted through a format and reinstall (for other reasons - I'm giving the laptop away), which would seem to indicate issues at a lower level with said DVD drive...but it seems to recognized fine in BIOS (I'm going to try using it as a boot drive with a BartPE or Linux image soonish to check, though).
 
There is an option to force install a driver, even if Windows does not think it is right. When you upgrade the drive from the Device Manager. Right click the device, select "Update Driver". Select "No, not this time" if it asks to look online. Select "Install form a list or specific location (Advanced)" and hit next. At the bottom of the next screen select "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and hit next. Uncheck "Show compatible hardware" and then use the "Have Disk..." button to point to the appropriate drivers. You can install any driver this way.
 
Could you post the Hardware ID's of the device?
VID_0930 PID_0C05

There is an option to force install a driver, even if Windows does not think it is right. When you upgrade the drive from the Device Manager. Right click the device, select "Update Driver". Select "No, not this time" if it asks to look online. Select "Install form a list or specific location (Advanced)" and hit next. At the bottom of the next screen select "Don't search. I will choose the driver to install" and hit next. Uncheck "Show compatible hardware" and then use the "Have Disk..." button to point to the appropriate drivers. You can install any driver this way.
The question is then where are the default MS drivers for DVD burners.

Haven't actually gotten around to testing with a bootable disk yet. My older ones seem to have gone missing :confused: :(

EDIT: Well, I think I'll go with screwed-up drive on this one. Tries furiously to read the boot disk without anything happening. :shrug:
 
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Although it may not appear so, your DVD drive is a USB device. IIRC, the last time I used a USB CD drive, it was first detected as a USB mass storage device and listed under USB Controller sin device manager, then it also came up as a CD Drive under DVD/CD Drives.

If yours is only coming up as a USB mass storage device, then the optical drive portion of it may be busted. You should definitely try booting to a bootable disk with it to see whether or not it works.
 
yeah, when stuff starts to be detected as something else like that, it's almost always a hardware issue with the device.
 
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