CD Drive won't read discs

Hi all: I recently posted a problem with my DVD drive not recognizing + discs that I have yet to find a fix, now, my 10 year old daughter's machine's CD drives will not read CDs.

She is getting an error message from XP home that the CD is either corrupt or in a format that Windows does not recognize. She has two CD drives, one read only, one CD-RW/R. Her machine gives the same error message on each drive.

Funny, because the same CD reads fine in my XP home machine.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the drives, no help.

I have no idea on how to go about fixing this. Any ideas out there?

Any and all replies will be appreciated.

Martin

 

This is common when you're dealing with CD's that have been burned on another computer using a different drive. It is more prevalent when using cd-rw disks.

To minimize this problem, always use CD-R disks if you expect them to be readable on other drives. Even then there will be times that the disk may not be readable on certain drives.

In your case, do your daughter's drives read commercially recorded program CD's without any problems?

 

Hi Surferdude: No, they won't read ANY cds. I tried to do a sfc /scannow and no go, will not read the installation cd.

These d..n drives are driving me crazy.

Thanks for the reply.

Martin

 

How long has this been going on? How long has your DVD burner problem in this thread been going on. If they are both recent, it makes me wonder if it could be something that's common to both computers. I did some searching in the Google groups and see quite a bit of this (your daughters problem) but most go unanswered. I did find one thread that sounded as though it could be similar. You can read it here. I was wondering if you both had the same software installed for a USB drive if it could possibly be the source of your DVD burner problem also.

If that isn't the answer, you might try disabling all the startup stuff in msconfig and see if they work then. If both computers started giving you trouble recently, I'd start looking for something that you've done to both computers recently (if anything). Even if it seems as though it would be totally unrelated. I know this is a stretch but you never know.

 

Hey Zander: Thanks for your concern. Allison is not sure when she last ran a CD on her machine. She says maybe a week, which may or may not be correct or around the same time as my problem started. The only thing I have done to both machines in the recent past is install service pack 2. Never had a problem before that, but I can't really pin it down. Service pack 2 was installed from the CD on my machine and downloaded and installed by auto update on hers.

Allison's machine is set up as a dual boot with Windows XP home and Windows Millinieum. Boot it into Millinieum and both her CD players and her CD-RW/R work as advertised. I was also able to boot her machine from the Windows XP install disc, which the players do not recognize in Windows.

In my machine both packet writing software programs, InCD from Nero and Pinnicale's InstantWrite fail to recognize +CD's (each installed alone) Windows does not recognize + CDs either. (with or without any packet writing software installed) Get error message: "Incorrect Function"

In my machine all of the programs recognize -CDs. To top this weirdness off, Nero's burning program will burn a + CD on my machine without even a hiccup.

Talk about confusing??

I have already tried shutting everything down, all gone out of start up. no go. That includes uninstalling and reinstalling the drives and the writing programs with nothing running. Device manage says all ok.

I have done all the scanning, virus, spyware, adware, etc. Her machine will not run SFC because XP Home refuses to recognize her Windows disc.

The only USB on her machine is a Compact Flash card reader. I got lots of USB stuff on my machine, but nothing new that would have precipitated the problem. The newest is at least 3 months old, drive worked fine till very recently. Hard to pin down the time as it has been a while since I tried to write to the + discs.

I'm stymied.

Martin

 

Hi again: I just got back from Wal-Mart with DVD+RW and + R discs by Memorex.

The +R discs are read as 308MB, same as the RIdata discs and the drive label shows CD Drive with them inserted.

The +RW discs show up as 4.78GB as they should, but I can neither write to them or format them.

Windows will not make a new folder on the disc, error message: Disc is write protected. Instant Write Packet Writing says: Error Occured during format.

So that eliminates faulty discs as the possible problem. (I think)

Since the two machines running XP home are affected, and the drives work on the dual boot machine in millinium, I'm thinking more and more it is a Service Pack 2 problem.

Other than the link from Zander's post to the other bbs, has anybody else out there had this problem??

I surely could use some ideas on what I might try.

Any and all responses will be greatly appreciated. If you have a fix, or even an idea to try, you will be rewarded with my undying gratitude.

Martin

 

Pinnacle rings a bell as one of those manufacturer's of a product or products that lose function with xpsp2 upgrade. Perhaps it's not you cdrom's that are the problem but a bad combination of software compatibility and xpsp2 and one or both of these is effecting your rom drives.
See:
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/homepage/support.asp?Langue_ID=7

http://pinnacle.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...r/std_adp.php?p_faqid=62&p_created=1004664575

http://pinnacle.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...arch=1&p_search_type=search_nl&p_sort_by=dflt

NOTE: I also vaguely recall something about a manual registry edit involving rom "filters" needing to be done, for this product, to fix a cdrom issue. Particularly after an uninstall or reinstall. It's in the imediate above link somewhere.....Here it is:
http://pinnacle.custhelp.com/cgi-bi...nBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y2FuJ3QgcmVhZCBjZCdz&p_li=

Nero may have it's own set of problems with the sp2 patch. A visit to their site may also be needed.

===========
Forgive my merely brushing across these issues, it's a bit late or I should say it's in the wee hours of the morning, for myself. I'm just to squinty eyed and mentally tired to start faq reading and support site diving at the moment. I thought I'd mention these now, in case I don't get a chance to make it back to the computer before you do. It's another factor to consider and a place to start. You may want to pursue these sp2 issue's. While our forum and members are excellent bar none, (based on personal bias , sometimes it helps to go straight to the horses mouth, so to speak. Any forums for these support sites may be a good place to peek into. Chances are others have already been through what you are now going through and know how to fix it in the most direct manner.

Special Note:
Upon reading your past post as supplied via Zanders link. I couldn't help but notice this little goodie in reference to to reported disk size:

While I know this isn't your exact problem I can't help but figure it, once again, it is software related.

 

Hey Godez: Thank you so much for your interest, I really appreciate it when my back is up against the wall and help comes to the rescue.

Unfortunately, I still do not have a fix. I followed all of the links in you post and spent a lot of time on Pinnicales site. I recently installed Pinnicale's Studio 9 Plus on this machine so besides having their Instant Write their fixes were of great interest.

I applied the registry filter delete proceedure on my machine, but no help. Then I reinstalled Instant Write, it added it's own filters to the registry, but the drive still will not recognize + discs. the drive description in My Computer changes from DVD to CD when a +DVD disc is inserted. It shows the correct capacity and opens a window, but Windows will not write to the disc, saying it is write protected. Instant Write Format displays an error message, "an error occured while formatting the media. "

Since these changes and other fixes that I don't even remember, the +RW disc size is reported correctly, no more 308MB size.

It appears that whether or not packet writing software is installed there is no access to the discs.

It still seems very strange that -discs have no problems, just the + discs. Not only that, very frustrating, any of the help sites I have visited list some fixes for -disc writers but do not mention + discs.

I have not tried deleting the filter drivers on my daughters machine that won't read any CDs, and has no Pinnacle software installed. I am tempted to uninstall SP2 on her machine just to see what happens.

Please (to all) don't give up on this I can't tell you how much
I appreciate the help.

Martin

 

martinr121, Let's look at your atapi.sys files. You should find three when doing a search. Click properties on the one in the System32 folder and then click the Version Tab and then the "File Properties" line in the item field. See if it says:

5.1.2600.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)

It should also have a size of 93.1 KB (95,360 bytes)

and a modified date of Tuesday, August 03, 2004, 11:59:42 PM

Double checking on all three of them finds them to be identical. Just curious as to how yours stacks up.

 

Martin,
I may be missing something here... but why are you trying to use "+" disks when you Pioneer DVD is compatible with "-" disks. Unless your dvd drive is compatible with both formats that may well be your problem. Look here... Pioneer
HTH

B

 

Hi Surferdude: Two of the files are identical to yours. One is different, it is the uninstall file, 84 KB. Thanks for trying to help figure out this puzzle.

Martin

 

Hi Mr, B: I have two burners. One Pioneer DVD-RW/R, and the subject burner, NEC DVD ND 2500A Combo drive, DVD+RW/R DVD-RW/R.

Both burners handle-RW/R discs fine, NEC burner a week or so ago burned + discs @ 8X, now this problem.

Ari won't let me change my signature, says got too much in there now.

Thanks for your interest.

Martin

 

I just looked back on an old drive image I made in August, before doing SP2, and found the atapi.sys driver for the SP1 version. I copied it and pasted into the C:\windows\system32\drivers folder. It went right in after the standard warning screen about the existing one being there.

Then I rebooted and all is still working fine. I offer this as something you may want to consider but only if you are up to it. I got the idea from some other person who had the same problem as you and he said that fixed it for him. I offer no guarantee but see no real danger since the old driver was MS worthy and worked prior to SP2. You would have to get your old driver from the Uninstall folder that you mentioned. My old ones specs were:

size: 84.8 KB (86,912 bytes)
Modified date: Thursday, August 29, 2002, 12:27:50 AM
and the Version info: 5.1.2600.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)

It's your choice, I'll not feel bad if you choose not to.

BTW, I returned mine to the SP2 version by merely deleting my replacement and letting XP replace it as it does so well. Sure enough, I got the SP2 version back after a screen refresh.

If you do elect to try this, I would advise you to make a copy of the present atapi.sys file and store it somewhere to cover yourself if something goes amiss with the process.

 

Okay that makes a little more sense Have you tried different brands of discs? Some drives are pretty particular about what you feed them. I know that's not a very definitive suggestion, but I've seen several instances where certain drives would only work with certain disks (no set pattern, just kind of random). Sorry I can't be of more assistance.

B

 

I may be way off base here and I'm throwing this out so someone with more experience in this particular area can follow, confirm, refute, tell me to go back into hibernation or whatever. One of the more troublesome problems I ran into a few years ago relative to CD's was a direct result of ASPI driver conflicts after installing a Plextor CDRW drive and their software on top of an older (Adaptec at that time) version of EZ CD Creator which had been preceeded by an HP CDRW and their proprietary revision of EZ CD Creator. Poor machine (my own) didn't know what to do. Admittedly, this was all CD related, not DVD related, but I reference it as a suggestion for further follow up, investigation and commentary by those more versed in this particular discipline. My problem was eventually resolved by running a Force ASPI utility patch, changing a couple of drivers and installing a Plextor compatable ASPI driver. Since that time, I have always looked at ASPI driver incompatability when checking out systems with CDRW related problems and multiple installs for writing to CD's. Again, not saying this has any bearing on your DVD problem - I'll leave that to those more knowledgeable, but thought I'd throw it out as food for thought.

 

Surferdude: Hey, I'm willing to try anything. Just how do I extract the aspi driver from the uninstall file? How to install it in sys folder? But before we go with that, read on.

Mr. B. I thought of the same thing, even though the machine previously did write to the RIdata discs, I went out and bought some Maxwells. Same Problem.

Hi Rockster: Long time no see. It appears you are not the only one thinking it is a driver problem. But now the plot thickens.

This post was originally started about my daughter's machine which suddenly won't read CD discs, not even her install disc. She has a little digital camera and took some pictures this evening. That's when I discovered her machine won't read her compact flash card either. USB card reader.

So I thought, since my machine will read the CF card, I'd copy the pictures to floppy on my machine. Well, my machine copies one picture and reports floppy full, 800KBs. So I go to format the floppy, my machine, no dice, won't format. I try again with a different floppy, same result. So I figure, well, the floppy has one of her pix, I'll at least copy it from the floppy in her machine to her Pix folder.

Her machine reports: disc not formatted, would you like to format it now?

My machine will not format the disc, but it does contain the one picture I copied from the cf card and I can view that picture on my machine but cannot format the floppy. Her machine does not see the picture, reports floppy not formatted.

So I figure what the heck, let her machine format it. It won't. reports: disc cannot be formatted.

My machine: DVD+R write problems,
Newly discovered will not format Floppy
Newly discovered will only write 800KB to floppy

Her machine:
Won't read CDs
Newly discovered Won't read Floppy
Newly discovered will not format Floppy
Newly discovered Won't read Compact Flash Card


Boy, am I sorry I ever installed service pack 2. Both machines ran fine for a long, long, long time before that. Anybody think an uninstall of service pack 2 in order here?? Or is there some other reasonable explanation?

Thanks guys for all of your concern.

Martin

 

I must confess, if it were me in your position, I'd not hesitate to uninstall SP2 and wait for the issues to be resolved by others.

 

Surferdude: That's a tough decision, I'm going to wait a while & see if anybody else chimes in on this.

Thanks again

Martin

 

Nice job Martin - what do you call that machine again?
I think surferdude was talking about ATAPI.SYS not ASPI so make sure you clarify the two - they are very different. I'm sending you a link about ASPI but after your most recent post I think you have bigger problems.

I don't have a clue but I also don't think this is totally SP2 inspired. (just a gut feeling predicated on nothing in particular except both machines?) Since you have grabbed my curiousity I may do some inquiring and will be back if I find anything of consequence. In the meantime, I'd sure be doing on-line scans to eliminate the potential that this is trojan, worm or virus related. You might also want to check and verify that those machines can read a 98 boot disk on startup just to see if you might have picked up a boot virus.

Lastly, and you're not going to like this ....... if that was my box, it probably would get wiped and rebuilt from scratch. No, thats not my recommendation - just a reflection on my own behavior.

Again - Good Luck.

 

Rockster,
Martin won't wipe Catastrophe. I've been trying to talk him into it for a year. Catastrophe is a finicky girl, and she likes to misbehave just to make Martin's hair gray. The last time he threatened her with his XP cd, his garage door opened and closed for days, his wife ran off with a Radio Shack salesman, and his dog began to meow. He is under her spell, and she likes it that way.

Martin,
It can't hurt to uninstall SP2 from your daughter's machine, first, right? It's actually fairly painless. I had to do it on a friend's computer last week because I couldn't get IE to work properly, though the computer was clearly online. I wish I had something helpful to contribute, but I don't. I am anxiously awaiting the resolution, however, and hoping Catastrophe doesn't take up with the furnace, next. It will be a cold cold winter!

Johanna