The case of the disappearing drive

I use Windows Vista,and for the most part it works. Double-clicking on the Computer icon brings up the drives that are installed as well as the occasional external drives and memory stick.

Somewhere along the way,my DVD drive icon would vanish from this explorer window if I ejected a disk or just randomly vanish. A reboot would bring it back,but rebooting is not a permanent fix. I tried uninstalling an reinstalling the driver software,but that didn't work. As always being totally clueless about the inner workings,I briefly but concisely describe the problem and type that description into Google search. It didn't take long. It's happened to others and after reading a few articles, I got a link to the Microsoft Support article that gave me the option to use their software to fix the problem,or to manually adjust the registry settings myself. The "Fix it for me" link downloaded a program that successfully made the right adjustments. The dvd drive hasn't gone missing from the Computer window since then.

I met a file that wasn't there...

Cleaning up some files on my Windows desktop,I saw a blank .torrent icon. So I attempted to delete it. Instead of the usual trip to the recycle bin,I got a message that said the file no longer existed. After attempting to do this in both safe mode and through Command Prompt,I pulled up Google Search and ran the error message through it. I got a link to this freeware program called Unlocker which instantly did the trick. It's also a good thing if for some reason a file is not released after it's associated program is closed. I recommend it as a satisfied customer.