Where'd my DVD drives go?

I just encountered my first major problem since upgrading to Vista about 6 months ago. It was only a matter of time, and judging from what I've read online from various sources I've actually been pretty lucky to last this long without a serious problem.

Right after I finished installing my new memory I went ahead and finished editing my daughter's birthday party video. Great, the new RAM really sped up that task. Time to burn...

What the hell, where did my D:\ and E:\ drives go? They're not showing up in Adobe Premiere Elements . Hmmm...maybe it's Premiere acting funny I better check Windows Explorer. Nope gone there as well. WTF? Now I'm really confused, I haven't changed anything other than adding a couple sticks of RAM. Now I have to start troubleshooting.

First thing that crosses my mind is maybe I've disconnected one of the cables when I opened up my case. I take a quick peek and confirm this is not the problem. Then I check Device Manager and see that I have a nice error message informing me that an error is preventing Windows from loading the device drivers (code 39) for both DVD drives. I didn't write down the exact error message but it was something along those lines. I try updating the drivers for both, and Nada. I get the typical "you already have the latest drivers". Maybe a quick rescan of my hardware will make them show up. Nope. That would be too easy.

Surely System Restore should be able to fix whatever change was made to my system. I mean isn't that the whole point to it? I try the last 4 restore points before giving up on System Restore. That's not gonna fix it either, and I'm really not feeling like re-installing my OS. It took long enough the first time and I'm lazy.

Now I'm getting really annoyed, but I remember that Google is my friend and surely I'm not the first to experience this problem. First stop, the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Surely there's a fix for this already, but try as I might I can't find anything. Thank you Microsoft for nothing.

After some quick "Googling" I finally find a fix for my problem here. Now normally I'm pretty reluctant to mess around with my registry but like I said before I'm lazy and not feeling like doing a clean OS install. Luckily for me the reg-edit works like a charm and my drives magically reappear.

Great...now let's get back to work and burn that video. WTF? My drives still don't show up in Premiere Elements but I'm staring at them in Windows Explorer. Grrrr. Why does it have to be so difficult? Oh well, don't feel like re-installing Premiere so I'll just export to folder and burn it with Nero. What a PITA!

So, that's where I'm at now. My drives are back and working fine, except for when it comes to Premiere Elements. And I still have no idea what caused this mess.