Code 39 on CD-Rom drive

I'm trying to help a friend with her daughter's Dell laptop. The CD rom drive just stopped working. I checked in Device Manager and it shows a code 39 error. I've searched the Dell website and Googled the error code and 99% of the hits I've found say to delete the Upper and Lower filter keys in the registry and reboot and it should fix the problem. Well, it didn't. I tried deleting the drive and letting windows rediscover it and that didn't work. I've tried letting windows update the driver and that didn't help either. At this point I'm not sure what to do to resolve this problem. If anyone has any idea on what to try please let me know.

This is a Dell Inspiron 2200 laptop running WinXP/SP2.

 

Hi,

What I think you should do first is to check that the drive actually works. You can do this by booting to a boot disk (example, a Windows CD).

Uninstall any burning software (and consider uninstalling it/them in Safe Mode). See if the filters can be removed again.

Here is the MS instructions:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/en-us

I have other suggestions, like installing/reinstalling the ASPI and reinstalling/updtaing the IDE controllers, here:
http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=61829

Matt

 

dell

dell has a list of drivers for your machine under removable storage

 

Sorry for not posting back to this for a while, I was on vacation for a week and just caught up to the person with the problem at the end of last week.

I think I've proven it's not hardware, so this thread may need to be moved to the XP forum. I was able to successfully boot from my WinXP CD, so it looks like the drive is ok.

What I've done so far, to no avail;

I removed the Sonic burning software that was installed, deleted the UpperFilters in the registry and deleted the drive, rebooted and no luck. I downloaded the V4.60 ASPI layer suggested in the thread posted by Mattman, dumped the current layer and deleted it, then installed the downloaded one, still no luck.

I haven't tried deleting/installing the IDE controller yet, will probably try that tonight.

I'm open to other suggestions, so far nothing seems to have worked.

 

You have done most of the tests and checks that I know of, one or two others?
Update the IDE controllers:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...1&vercnt=2&formatcnt=1&libid=27&fileid=149851

You have uninstalled the Sonic program. Check that there may not be any other CD/DVD "related" programs installed. As an example, some programs can make a "virtual" CD drive that allows you to run CD based applications from your harddrive.

If it was a desktop machine I would change the drive's configuration, but that's not feasible in your situation (although, if it not too hard to physically remove the drive, take it out and boot into Windows once or twice without it, hopefully it will get reinstalled correctly when you replace it).

If you cannot find a solution, me, I would consider that there was a major problem and look at backing up, formatting and reinstalling Windows. I have had success with most of those methods, on one or two occasions I have given up and reformatted (I don't usually give up very easily ). You get one benefit, that is, of having a fresh new system.

Matt

 

Mattman,

I'm going to look into the IDE drivers and try installing the latest ones from Dell and see if that helps. The only other CD/DVD related programs on it are reader/player type, no other burning software. As I understood the MS article, it was burning software that causes this issue. Do you think I should uninstall the reading software also?

I don't know if reinstalling Windows will be an option, it belongs to a friend's daughter and she doesn't have any of the restore/recovery CD's as she got it from someone else. I'd have to look at Dell's site to see how to do a reinstall, hopefully they have a recovery partition on it, I haven't looked yet.

This one is very frustrating, I haven't given up yet though.

Thanks for the help.

 

Thank you matman
followed your post on wifes inspiron 6000 got 4 updates that i did not know i needed. it was the scan my computer on the left. did updates from dell several times but never saw the let them do it before TYVM

 

BillB, no orginal disks, yes find out what the options are. If Windows should not happen to work or if the HDD fails, it looks like you will be the one that gets the knock at the door.

I was going to suggest reinstalling Sonic, then going into Safe Mode and uninstalling it and any other CD/DVD related programs. "CD/DVD related programs ", I might consider an update of Windows Media Player to be one. WMP has burning capabilities. The original install of WMP should not be a problem, but an update may be. A "reader ", like another type of media player might not be a problem, there are some I trust and some I don't. If it is a download, maybe uninstall it and later a newer version can be downloaded (or reinstalled from disk if it is something like iPod software).

Sonic has a UDF format reader (I forget it's name), uninstall that if it is still installed. Check the FAQs at the Sonic website (let me know if you would like help) in case there are any special uninstallers, info on why this may be happening, etc.

Hope you get some luck.

Dytrog, glad it was of some assistance

Matt

 

Well, it turns out that there is a problem with the drive after all. I downloaded the manual and found out how to run the Dell internal diagnostics on the hardware. I ran the express test and it didn't find anything wrong. I then ran a more thorough test on just the CD drive and it reported an error code with the message 'spindle test failed'. I ran the test several more times, each with the same result. Part of the message text says to contact Dell for a possible replacement. So, I've returned the laptop with my findings but I'm sure I'll be getting it back to do the swap, or possibly even to order the equipment and do the swap.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm keeping them for future reference.