I recently purchased a used Dell Latitude E6420 running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (SP1) and I'm otherwise very happy with it. But after I finished installing all the recommended drivers from the Dell website, it developed an unusual problem: the optical drive (PLDS DVD+-RW DU-8A3S) appears as removable hardware even though it isn't and if I 'eject' it, I need to reboot the system before it works again.
This didn't used to happen before on this machine and is the first time I've ever experienced an issue like this, ever. My mom and a friend also bought the same model at the same time--there's a similar problem on my mom's machine (also Win 7 x64) but not on my friend's machine (Win 8.1 x64).
I suspected it might be a driver issue but re-installing the optical device's driver and even doing a system restore didn't fix it. I also found some information from Microsoft's Windows Hardware Dev Center Archive that states:
Incorrect SATA Configuration
Incorrect SATA configuration can appear in the following situations:
- If the system incorrectly identifies an internal SATA port as external, Windows disables LPM on that port and therefore cannot conserve power to the port. In addition, Windows treats the internal non-removable device that is connected to that port as a removable device. For example, it appears in the Safely Remove Device dialog box in the system tray and in Devices and Printers.
- If an external SATA port is not correctly configured, it is possible for a device that is connected to the port to be considered not removable and therefore to fail to appear in the Safely Remove Device dialog box in the system tray and in Devices and Printers.
If an internal SATA port is incorrectly configured as an external SATA port, a system vendor or administrator can correct it without updating the system BIOS or the Windows software.
To work around this problem, you can disable external SATA support on a per-channel basis by setting the value of the TreatAsInternalPort registry key to 1 and then rebooting the system.
If the system has both internal and external SATA ports, but a device that is attached to an internal SATA port appears in the Safely Remove Devices dialog box in the system tray or in Devices and Printers, you should reset the registry key for the port.
I wasn't able to find the registry key mentioned and I'm reluctant to modify the registry without being certain of what it is I'm supposed to do. Has anyone resolved a similar issue, and any help please?