Hardware
Microsoft Office
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Windows 7
Windows Vista

After upgrading to Windows 7, my DVD drive disappears at random
My Icon to "Safely Remove" my thumb drive is missing - What should I do?
I can't find any e-mail programs in Windows 7 (Outlook Express, Windows Mail, etc) - What can I use?

There seems to be a bug within the Release Candidate version of Windows 7 that makes the DVD drive disappear/reappear. Here are a few things to try: First - when booting your computer, hold F8 right after the POST screen. When a menu pops up, choose "Disable Driver Signature Enforcement" If that doesn't work, try this: Click on Start > All Programs > Accessories > Right click Command Prompt > Run as administrator. Then type: bcdedit /set loadoptions DDISABLE_INTEGRITY_CHECKS Restart the computer Another thing to try is a simple registry edit. If you are not comfortable editing the registry, DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS METHOD. Also, be sure to backup your registry before editing. If you feel confident editing the registry, try this: Click Start > All Programs > Accessories > Run - type regedit and click OK. Then locate this registry key: "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}" - In the right pane look for "UpperFilters" And/Or "LowerFilters" - if you have either of these, right click on them, and choose Delete. Then restart your computer. **Making this change may require you to reinstall some software such as CD/DVD Burning software.

You should have an up aarow symbol to the left of your clock - click on that, and it will show "Hidden" icons. Windows automaticall hides certain icons that it doesn't think you need constant access to. You can change these settings if you want to.

It seems that Microsoft has left several programs out of Windows 7 (e-mail, messager, photo editor, etc) for a couple reasons - it reduces the requirements for installation, and gives you more options to choose the programs you want to use. Microsoft does offer a set of FREE programs to cover all of these missing features called Windows Live Essentials. You can find more information about that here: