Internal DVD R/W no longer recognized

Hello everyone,

A month or so ago I updated to Win8, 64bit. That all went fine and everything has been working fine. The night before last the DVD R/W just stopped working.

When I open Windows Explorer the drive is recognized, at least there is a drive letter for it, it says DVD RW Drive (Z: ). Like I said it has been working. I have played movies, installed a PC DVD game, etc.

When I double click on the drive, trying to access the disk that is in the drive I get a popup window saying, Application not found.

Running the troubleshooter accomplishes nothing, it just runs in a circle. The going to the device manager I see the drive, there are no signs of anything wrong (no yellow icons, etc), properties say the device is working properly, and trying to update the driver says that the correct drive is already installed.

I cannot figure out what is going on.

As the login name suggest, my knowledge of things is limited, so please, if you have a suggestion, please explain how to accomplish what you are asking me to do.

Thank you in advance for any help you give me.

Jim