DVD drive not visible in Explorer

Question

We've got a weird problem in a classroom. All computers are on Windows XP Pro and they all have got the same problem: Their DVD drives ain't visible in Windows Explorer.

The drive is visible in device manager. When we install Total Commander, the drive is visible in it and works correctly. It seems that the DVD drive works perfectly just anywhere... except the Windows Explorer. What is the reason? What system setting can hide DVD from Explorer?

(The computers were installed by our IT administrator, not me. But he doesn't know what is the cause of this problem, so I try to ask here.)

Update: When I manually enter D: to address bar in Explorer, I can access the drive. But then if I go one directory up, I still don't see the drive in the list of drives. So the drive works even in Explorer if one knows it's drive letter. Just not visible.

Answer 1

Sometimes your Group Policy settings hide certain drives from Explorer. If that's not the issue, you could try going into the registry and looking through HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer — there's something in there about hiding drives (I can't remember the specific key).