My optical drive committed suicide by chewing up a disk. I don't have time to replace it now, and I'd like to uninstall the drivers until I do. Invoking uninstall in device Manager doesn't work; the drive comes back upon reboot. From the archives I've found that HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet0 can be used to fix "lost drive" problems, but I'm not sure how to manipulate the key so that the drivers would stop loading for a couple of boots, but I could get them to load again after I've replaced the drive. I'd apreciate any advice. Thanks - ed

Originally Posted by Lottiemansion

Hi,

Just disable the drive in device manager!

Of course, that's the first thing I did. doesn't work, that why I tried to uninstall. In both cases the drivers get autoinstalled on reboot.

With respect, you're wasting my time.

Originally Posted by Lottiemansion

Ok,

If you leave the drive in & the system installs the drivers, so what? You already know the drive is defective, just leave it alone. That way the system will not keep bothering you about it.

You can address the drive & driver issue when you replace the drive.

Just to be clearer than I thought I was in my original post: With the defective drive in place, it starts up anew on reboot, screaming away & doing itself more damage than it has already. I want the system to *not* load drivers as a way to forestall those start-ups until I have time to pull the unit. The interesting question is not why I don't pull the drive, but rather why does disabling or uninstalling *not* prevent these startups? The setting of some registry key is involved, evidently; I posted in the expectation that someone might point me to it, or explain what controls Vista's autoloading of them. If I'm wrong, and the drivers have nothing to do with the autostarting of the drive, that would be nice to know too.

Just go into the BIOS and make the hard drive the first boot option. Does that work?

Originally Posted by wither 3

Just go into the BIOS and make the hard drive the first boot option. Does that work?

No; neither did removing the drive from the boot seque4nce altogether. i tried these after disable/uninsall were unsuccessful.

Afer roaming thru the archives and some links suggested there (all concerning discovering or installing optical-drive drivers, not uninstalling or hiding) I found a couple of registry keys that are worth investigating, but I haven't got time to do that carefully now. Evidently this situation isn;'t one that folks have had occasion to consider, so the shortcut, if there is one, hasn't been discovered yet.