MATSHITA BD-RE UJ-225S ATA DEVICE and Windows 10 - a bad combination!

You upgraded to Windows 10 and your DVD/Bluray drive is gone? It can become difficult or even impossible...

In my case it's about the Matshita Bluray drive called 'UJ 225S' in a Medion Akoya P8610. Initially sold with Windows Vista was the system later upgraded to Windows 7. So it's already a few years old. 

Last year there was the possibility to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. The owner of that laptop did it, but he later noticed that his Bluray drive wasn't available anymore. Interestingly in the BIOS it's still there and you can even boot from it. Using a current live Linux distribution to boot you can still see in the device overview.

So what can you do from here? 
A helpful solution which I've seen quite often and it apparently solved the issue in many cases is the following:
1) Go to regedit and select the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/atapi /

2) Create a new key named 'Controller0'

3) Create a new DWORD in Controller0 called EnumDevice1

4) Change the value of EnumDevice1 to 1

5) Restart your computer and your DVD/Bluray device should be back... 

BUT IT DIDN'T WORKED!

I found other suggestions to update the BIOS to version M1.04, but the BIOS was already running with the version M1.08. So that wouldn't make real sense...

ANOTHER IDEA: CHIPSET DRIVER

Maybe it's an idea to update the chipset driver? But there are no official Windows 10 chipset drivers available. You 'just' find the ones for Windows 7. And if you try them with your Windows 10 Medion Akoya laptop... you'll end up having a bluescreen.

Better use system recovery and go back to a date before you tried that. 

CONCLUSION

Basically it's something you end up nowhere. Either go back to Windows 7, use a Linux, use an external drive or maybe even change your optical drive completely. Too bad it's too old and not working with Windows 10, physically it's still very good.

Ways to make screenshots in Windows without extra tools

The possibilities of making screenshots in Windows have increased over the last decade. Of course there are some extra tools doing the same job - but what can Windows do on its own?

I'll show you three possible ways to accomplish that: A classic way, an included tool and a new fast key combination.

1. The 'Print' key and Paint
That's more or less the oldest trick to make screenshots in Windows. You press the 'Print' key on your keyboard and go to 'mspaint', right-click 'Paste' and the screenshot is within the file and you just need to save. Instead of Paint you can use other software of course - even Word. With pressing 'Alt' + 'Print' you copy just the windows in front to the clipboard.

2. Snipping Tool
Since Windows Vista Microsoft has included another way to make screenshots. With the Snipping Tool you are able to decide which part of the screen you want to take a screenshot from. Since Windows 10 the tool got an additional feature: It's possible now to make screenshots with a previously set time delay.

3. "Windows" key plus "Print" key
That's the one I would bet many of you didn't know. Since Windows 8 you can press the 'Windows' key plus the 'Print' key and a screenshot will be saved as a *.png file in the following directory: \Pictures\Screenshots. That's definitely the fastest possible way Windows can offer.