My wife's acer 3100 vista computer has a problem with the cd/dvd drive disappearing. For the majority of the time it's not there nor is it in the device mgr.IT'S OUT OF WARRANTY so I'm hoping someone can help. I've done the old regedit remove upper and lower filters and had no luck. Although by my constant fiddleing have made it reappear a couple of times only to vanish again right before my eyes or after the next system restart.One time I did a system restore in safe mode and it came back but this only worked once. Then another time I was in the device manager under ide ata/atapi controllers and there is listed 3 seperate ide channels. Of course I don't know which one is for the cd/dvd cause it's missing. I know one of them is for the hard drive because it's listed. So one by one I disabled then enabled the other 2. Then bingo when I did the first one the dvd/cd suddenly appeared in the device manager so of course now I know that one ide channel is for dvd/cd drive. After a system restart it's gone again so I think ok I can get it back. Disabled then enabled the ide channel and no such luck and have tried it may times with no luck..........Any ideas, thanks

p.s latest driver installed and here's another wierd observation I have 2 of these laptops both exactly the same of course one is ok and the other not and both have most current cd/dvd rom drivers installed but when you compare the driver version numbers there not the same.One will have driver version 6.0.6001.18000 and the other laptop will have 6.0.6001. 16335 ??????????

I have done all of the items in the fix article plus swapped the optical drive out with a identical differnent one and no luck.....any ideas

and finally it appears that the drive is not recognized bt the bios