Can no longer find CD/DVD drive?

To whom it may concern: I own a Toshiba Satellite A305D and I am running Windows Vista Ultimate. I recently burned a CD on iTunes (about a week ago) and once again tried to open my hard drive to read another CD today but the CD did not appear. The device turns on and spins the CD, so the motor doesn't seem to be a problem. I tried multiple CDs as well. I went to My Computer and the hard drive was no longer there, all I saw was the C: drive. If I go to Control Panel–>Hardware and Sound–>Device Manager I see the hard drive under "disk drive." It is a Hitachi HTS5425209SA00 ATA Device. I click on that and I am notified that the device is running properly. I have checked for updates and I'm running the latest version. I ran the Microsoft Fix It with no results. I also went back to a Restore Point (maybe not far back enough) and all that happened there was a Javascript error and something wrong with iTunes so I had to reinstall those. I have visited many forums on the web to help me with this problem but can't find a solution that seems to work. I opened the Registry as well and did that technique only to find under the "right hand column" Lower and Upper filters but by "right hand column" do they mean just the right hand box (because there are 3 columns in there and the Upper/Lower Filter are in the left most under "Name")? Forgive my lack of tech speak or knowledge, I just want access to my DVD/CD drive again Thanks!

Try this even though you may have tried some of them before:



One of these may help:
1. Uninstall the drive through Device Manager.
Restart computer. The drive will be automatically reinstalled.
or…
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060
Restart computer.
or…
3. Download, and run Restore Missing CD Drive patch
Double click on cdgone.zip to unzip it.
Right click on cdgone.reg, click Merge.
Accept registry merge.
Restart computer.
or…
4. Go to Device Manager, click a "+" sign next to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
You'll see two items:
- ATA Channel0 (or Primary Channel)
- ATA Channel1 (or Secondary Channel)
Right click on each of them, and click Uninstall. Confirm.
Restart Windows. They'll be automatically reinstalled.
5. Go to Microsoft's site http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cd_dvd_drive_problems and follow the steps.
6. Try the guide at this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116

Thank's to Broni for the instructions

Thank you for your helpful suggestion. I was able to re-seat the physical drive and it started to work again. Thanks again for your help!

That is great to hear. Just curious if when you had the drive out if the contacts were dirty?