Registry Key for Optical Drive or Drive is Dead

Hello.  My Dell Inspiron 3671 has the Hitachi/LG optical drive HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GU90N installed.

It has not been able to read blank DVDs after I completed the 20H2 update this month/May.  I was able to create a Repair Disc for the Windows 10 Version 2004 update in December 2020.

When I tried to create a Repair Disc for the 20H2 update couple of weeks ago  is when I discovered that the optical drive doesn't read blank DVDs anymore.

(I will attach a snip of the error message.)

I have done:

• system restores
• a startup repair
• updated chipsets
• tried to contact Hitachi/LG regarding a new driver – nothing on their sites
• reset the autoplay defaults
• did sfc /scannow, checkdisk
• checked the Shell Hardware Detection Services - it's running
• ran the Hardware Troubleshooter - everything is fine.
• tried to run the Optical Drive Diagnostics from Dell's site – at 99% the diagnostic tool on the Dell site SELF-cancelled – twice
• uninstalled and reinstalled device driver
• I cannot roll back to version 2004 because my Dell SupportAssist ran the optimizer and cleaned out my files

BUT… I tried to use the device in Safe Mode – and it did NOT work. 

My question is… if the device doesn’t work in Safe Mode … is it just … failed?  The device has less than 2 years usage – I purchased the PC from Dell in October 2019.  Is it failed due to corrupted Registry Keys?

The device migrated well with 2004 and since it uses the same base..why wouldn’t it work with version 20H2?

I had read , years ago, that some  people were successful adding registry keys to work around the problem of their optical drives not working after a Windows version update.  However, the posts I saw on various sites didn’t include the recent version of windows 2004 or 20H2.

With so many people having the same problem over the recent years with their devices after an upgrade…I keep wondering if its simply a registry error or a driver malfunction after the update.  How can that many optical drives just break?  My thoughts are that it has to be a registry error.

Before I go and try to get another optical drive – I was wondering if any of you know the proper registry keys to add to try and get my optical drive going again?