How to fix “Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)”

A client came to me this afternoon his problem was he cannot use his CD-ROM drive, He was unable to burn or even read CDs and his CD-ROM drive also did not show up on his My Computer.

While I was fixing it I ran across this error “Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)”

What I did to correct this problem was I first uninstalled his CD-ROM drive from the device manager, I restarted the computer but unfortunately the problem still remains. The uninstallation didn’t work so obviously it has a registry issue.

Below are the steps that I did to resolve the issue. You can follow the steps below If you are receiving this Code 39 error and your CD or DVD drive is missing and has a yellow exclamation mark in Device Manager. Backup your Registry first before you do anything on your registry.

• Close all open programs

• Open registry editor by going to Start –> Run and typing REGEDIT and press Enter

• Navigate on following key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/ Control/ Class
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

• Look for any of the following names in the right hand column.

UpperFilters
LowerFilters
UpperFilters.bak
LowerFilters.bak

• If any of those keys shown above are listed, right-click on them and choose Delete

• After deleting the keys, close your Registry Editor

• Reboot your computer

• Check if your CD or DVD drives have returned. Also check  your Device Manager and verify if  there is still a yellow exclamation and error code on your CD or DVD drive is.

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