[Windows] Optical drive disappearing after ejection

[abolibibelot]

On a Windows 7 system, my [LG] {mistake} Lite-On iHAS124 DVD writer keeps disappearing from the desktop after every time a disk is ejected. I have to physically disconnect it then reconnect it for it to be recognized again, which is quite a PITA when I really don't need any more of it. The drive is still listed in the “disk manager”, but with no drive letter, and if I try to assign it a letter I get an error message saying “incorrect parameter”. It doesn't happen with an external optical drive connected through USB.
What is going on, and how can I solve this issue ?

System based on an Asus Maximus Hero VIII motherboard, with Intel SATA drivers, if that matters, and it has two extra ASMedia SATA ports -- I'll have to verify if the optical drive is connected to an Intel SATA port or an ASMedia one. Could it be the cause if it's the latter ? I think that when I mounted the machine I figured that it would be better to reserve the supposedly faster Intel ports to the connexion of HDDs. Are ASMedia ports known to cause that sort of problems ?

Another issue, which may or may not be related with SATA ports : in HD Sentinel, I can no longer see the real-time data throughput of any connected drive under the Performance tab. It says “Real time performance monitoring is not supported on this disk”. I'm not sure when this changed, it is possible that it happened when I updated the storage drivers a few months ago. In this case it affects drives connected to Intel SATA ports, I'll have to verify if it also affects drives connected to the ASMedia ports.

Thanks for any useful insight.

[kyrcy]

I believe that your DVD writer (which is made by LiteOn and not LG) should work fine if connected to an ASMedia 106x SATA controller. I have a similar configuration and I never had such a problem.

[abolibibelot]

Sorry, Lite-On it is indeed (I have a LG one on an older machine).
It should work fine, but it does not. So how can I troubleshoot ?

[kyrcy]

I think you should try to isolate the problem and figure out if it is the drive, the controller or something else. You could check on which controller is the drive connected and then connect it to the other controller and see if it makes any difference. When did the problem appear? Did you make any changes to your system?

[abolibibelot]

So it is indeed connected to one of the ASMedia ports.
But I tried plugging it to an Intel port : same thing exactly.
I don't remember if it ever worked correctly on this machine as I rarely use optical drives these days anyway.

[TimA-C]

It's not the 'Hide empty drives in the Computer folder' option in the 'View' tab in the 'Folder Options' is it?

[aedipuss]

i believe that's for "removable" drives - i.e. things like external sd/cf/m2 card readers.

[abolibibelot]

It's not the 'Hide empty drives in the Computer folder' option in the 'View' tab in the 'Folder Options' is it?

Well, that box was checked indeed (I had never seen that option or bothered about it), but unchecking it didn't solve the issue. The drive letter disappears once the disk is ejected, but doesn't reappear once the tray is closed again with a dick in it. Sorry : a disk in it. (Damn keyboard with half erased letters.) Unless I unplug the drive and plug it again. Any software which has access to optical drive does no longer list / recognize it after a single ejaction. Sorry : a single ejection. (That keyboard again !)
Could it be related with BIOS / UEFI settings ?

[aedipuss]

i think you've got some of those win7 microsoft problems they just don't care about. they stopped fixing problems long before they ended all support for win7. if i were a betting person i'd say that m.$. added many problems to win7 themselves to try and get users to move on to win10. i had to move off win7 to win 8.1 for weird new unfixable problems recently myself.... win10 won't happen here, i can get along with linux just fine.

[jan5678]

You can try with a Linux live usb/dvd to check if your problem still exists. if so then the problem is in your drive or motherboard.
If not, it is a Windows problem. In that case try to remove the drive (while it is recognised) from the device manager and remove the driver as well, reboot.

If you have access to another computer you can test the drive on that machine, if the problem remains the drive is defective.
You can try to flash the latest firmware to the drive (if that will work that is) it happens sometimes that the firmware gets corrupted, don't know why though.