starting over

[daveed]

OS: vista home premium, 32 bit

Okay so here's my situtation.

I've encountered the stupid Vista bug where my dvd disk drive no longer appears in my computer and is therefore unusable. I've scoured the possible solutions to this and tried all of them to no avail.

Obviously not being able to use the disk drive is not acceptable for me. Right now my option is to leave the computer as it is, or somehow try to start over.

This is where it gets worse...Since it's a newish laptop (about 3-4 months old) it didn't come with a Vista disc and because I was a naive idiot I didn't make the recommended recovery discs. So, if I reformat the harddrive my computer is useless right? Reformatting would really really suck, but I'm willing to buy a large usb stick, save my stuff, and start over.

What should I do?

[Murf]

Welcome to CTH

Did you try the Upper/Lower Filter fix in the registry?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} - "Upperfilters" and "Lowerfilters". Delete them

[daveed]

Yes I have, but there was only one of the filters and it didn't change anything... (ie. no upper filter)

I should also add that there is no dvd/cdrom section in my device manager.

If I can get my hands on a vista install disk would I be able to reinstall vista?

[daveed]

I'm going to try a full recovery...