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.