Norton 360 Uninstall Causes Optical Drive Problem

[Retired]

After uninstalling Norton 360 from one of my systems, I discovered the optical drive (CD/DVD) disappeared from my system. Device Manager showed a yellow icon (indication of a problem) and the error message indicated the driver was either not installed or corrupted.

It seems the problem is known by Norton and Microsoft and a fix is available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Microsoft has a do it yourself Fix It utility that corrects the problem HERE

Other do it yourself Fix-It solutions can be found HERE

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Norton and McAfee are notorious for uninstall issues. They seem to have the attitude that once you install their products they cannot imagine anyone wanting to uninstall them.

 

[Retired]

After numerous attempts at various strategies, I believe I have solved the issue of the disappearing optical drive and the error message appearing when launching iTunes. The error message indicated a faulty installation, and in fact iTunes could not access the optical drive for burning or reading. Simply re-installing iTunes did not correct the problem.

I later discovered that Roxio was also unable to access the optical drive.

According to some suggestions, the issues may have been caused by the uninstallation of Norton 360.

The solution required the manual removal of Gear drivers, and reinstalling iTunes, while preserving iTunes data. Roxio required a "repair" reinstallation. The Windows Fix-It tool also used.