Just a quick post to thank Paula Sutton who just wrote to me with this solution for the problem she was having getting her laptop to “see” her optical drive. In addition to solving this particular issue, this Acer FAQ page might also provide some answers to other issues you may run up against so many thanks again Paula.

Hi

I found a fix for a problem with an 8290g that wasn’t seeing the optical drive and hence no discs could be played. the problem was with a corrupt registry. I don’t seem to be able to post this helpful info on here – tried 3 times now and about to give up [working on that one Paola - MW].

the fix is at http://support.acer-euro.com/faqs/search.html?Query=registry

“Optical drive will not detected in Windows Vista”

If this is helpful to others please could you post it as i found it by chance and it might help someone…

Paula