I finally got it working. What's weird is that I really did try this Win8 trick 2 times before.

Right click the start button and open an admin command prompt and paste this in, then reboot;...

This issue is as simple as the subject line. My DVD drive was working fine under Windows 7. In fact I even installed 10 from a burned DVD. Now it is completely MIA. No exclamation-marked devices on...