Hello,
The DVD drive fitted in my Gateway MT6832B Laptop (Vista home premium OS) has stopped working. It will no longer read or write to either CD or DVD disks. In device manager the drive is listed as an Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530A ATA device. If I click thereon I get a message that the device is working properly. When I first clicked on DVD regions no region was indicated. I clicked on UK and region 2 is now shown as the Current Region. When I clicked on update driver, after carrying out a search on line, I got a message to say that the best software was already installed. When I click on “Computer” DVD RW Drive (E) is shown. If I insert a DVD (or CD) disk and click on run or explore the disk is ejected and I am asked to insert a disk in Drive E. If I then reinsert the disk the drive makes a clicking/grinding noise but the disk is nor read. The evidence seemed to point to a hardware fault.

Perusing the issue in this forum I see a suggestion that it could be caused by a recent update in Windows Vista blocking the policies. The proposed remedy is to open regedit & go to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\explorer
In the right pane create a new 32-bit DWORD value, if it does not already exist, name it NoCDburning and assign the value data to 1
I have run into some problems. When I drill down from HKEY_CURRENT_USER I can get as far as Policies. Policies\explorer does not exist in my computer setup. There is no subkey named Explorer shown beneath Policies. Explorer is, however, listed beneath “current version”.
How should I proceed from here. If I highlight “policies“ the right window shows name: ab(default) Type: REG_SZ Data: (value not set). Should I create & add the new DWORD in this (the current version\“policies” ) right window.? Perhaps I should highlight current version\explorer and create the new DWORD in its right window?
Here I would point out that I have no experience of working within the Registry. The instructions say to Create a new 32-bit DWORD value, if it does not already exist. I am not sure that I would be able to recognise a DWORD if it does exist. Would it have a name that I would recognise?
I would welcome advice in the form of step by step instructions for the completion of the proposed procedure described above to remedy the DVD issue.

Many Thanks

Configuration: Windows Vista
Internet Explorer 7.0