Fix Hard Drive Or DVD Not Showing Up In Windows 7

Windows 7 Beta is very stable. There are only a handful of beta testers that are reporting problems with the new operating system. Two of those problems will be addressed in this article. The first is for users who created a dual boot system to run Windows Vista and Windows 7 on the same computer while the second deals with missing DVD drives in Windows 7.

Windows 7 will not assign a drive letter to the Windows Vista partition by default. Some say this is on purpose while others think that it is a bug. There is however an easy fix to access the data on the Vista drive in Windows 7.

Press [Windows], enter [diskmgmt.msc] and hit [enter] to open the Disk Management interface in Windows 7. You should see all the hard drives and partitions of the computer system. The partition containing the Windows Vista system should be without drive letter.

Right-click on the partition in the lower half of the screen and select Change Drive Letter And Path. Now click the Add button and assign a drive letter to the partition. The Windows Vista partition will now be visible in Windows 7.

A DVD drive not showing up in Windows 7 can have various reasons. One of the more common ones is if Windows 7 64-bit is installed on the computer. The 64-bit edition of Windows 7 verifies the digital signature of hardware drivers. If a driver cannot be verified it will be shown with a yellow exclamation mark in the device manager.

A quick workaround is to press F8 during boot to turn off digital signing. A permanent solution would be to disable the check of digital signatures completely:

1. Press Windows R, type regedit and press enter.

2. Open the Registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

3. In the right pane, right-click UpperFilters, and then click Delete.

4. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.

5. In the right pane, right-click LowerFilters, and then click Delete.

6. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.

7. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.