CD Drive won't read discs

Well Johanna, it is good to see you have not lost your sense of humor.

I uninstalled service pack 2 on my machine, but nothing has improved. I am floundering around accomplishing nothing. I guess I'll reinstall sp2, then do a sfc, go from there.

I would do a system restore, but all my images are relative recent and contain SP2. For some reason or another, Acronis True Image quit making incremental backups on October 2nd. No warning, no error messages.

But for now, I'm just going to quit trying to fix it. Tired and aggravated.

Thanks to all who have tried to help.

Martin

Aside to Johanna: Having pulled out all my hair over the last week, I have none left to turn gray. Your remark about my wife would have more credibility if I could just get her to run away with SOMEBODY!!!

 

Martin ....... I'm surprised how quickly you are throwing in the towel. Also surprised that you don't have a decent image to restore from, but ........ so be it.

Can you boot to a Win98 floppy? Two minutes of your time may answer a lot of questions.

 

Hi Rockster: Hey, the towel throwing was only temporary, I said: "for now "
You know I don't give up, ever, I'll keep throwing things at it till I get it fixed.

I can boot from the XP CD, my daughters machine and have considered doing a repair install, but I'm saving that for the last resort.

Fixing one machine is tough enough, two is lots worse for me, I have trouble keeping track of everything I've done to each one, going to have to start keeping notes. I can't imagine what it must be like to run a computer repair shop with 15 or 20 machines on the bench.

I have at least 1/2 dozen images on my machine,, unfortunately, they are all from after when the problem appeared. I have images by Acronis and Drive Image 8, but I had set up the machine to do the backups on a schedule and Acronis for some unknown reason quit. No warning, no error messages. The way I scheduled Drive Image 8 schedule allows only 3 images, otherwise it would eat too much disc space. Each image eats about 15 gigs. That's only partitions C & D. 3 images = 45gb. The earliest image was made last Wednesday.

I haven't given up, just resting between rounds. Round 10 is coming up shortly.

Tell me what I can learn from booting a 98 floppy?

Thanks again for your interest.

Martin

 

Can you boot to a Win98 floppy?

 

Hey Rockster, thanks for sticking with me on this.

The 98SE startup floppy I have is 4 years old and apparently can't be read.

I have an ME start up disc and it will start both machines to an A prompt with CD drive letter assigned.

Remember, in XP my daughters machine, dual boot using Partition Magic's Boot Magic, will not read CDs or Floppies. Booted into ME, all systems go.

When my machine is booted by the floppy, it tells me there are no Fat or Fat32 partitions, which is true, this machine is formatted NTFS. It does assign a CD drive letter.

OK, where do we go from here?

Martin

 

If the floppy drive is your first boot device, it doesn't matter how your HDD's are formatted and it doesn't matter if you don't have any HDD's. Assuming your floppy drive is OK and your boot disk is OK and your machine can't recognize it, it is possible that you may have a contracted a boot virus. Sounds like you have been able to boot however, so scratch that from your list of possible causes.

If you have BIOS cache enabled, you may want to disable it so your machine is reading right from the BIOS itself - this, just in case you have any corrupted files held in memory. One usually gets better performance set this way anyway.

Having said that, I don't think this is what ails you but I'll be damned if I have a clue - similar behavior in 2 machines is the troubling part. I'll scratch my head along with you.

 

I have to agree with both of these statements. Especially the first. Seems likely it would be something that's common to both computers. That's why I mentioned the USB thing. Unless there's something else common to both, it would seem that SP2 may be the cause. I'd try uninstalling it on one of them just to see what happens. If it fixes it, at least we'd know where the problem stems from. It would be a starting point.

 

Well Martin, since you have the problem narrowed down to XP software, why don't you do an F8 boot and select to create a bootlog? That will possibly help define any driver that isn't loading. As always, there will be several that don't load but perhaps we can sort the useless/not needed from the must haves and see if something points to a bum driver failing to load.

The bootlog will appear in the Windows folder and be named ntbtlog.txt.

Better instructions can be had here.

 

I don't remember if this was tried but it's worth a shot as it was a hotfix offered after sp2 (dated OCT. 28th). It refers to cdrom but may hold true for dvd. I dunno, you decide:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;883523

 

Just out of curiousity, you might want to try installing a new ASPI layer .
You can first set a restore point and then test this with no harm.

 

Rockster:

I downloaded that ASPI Zip file and unzipped it, but I don't know where it went. Looked in the C:\Unzipped folder, not there, does it install on unzip? If so, no change. Then did system restore. Also, on this machine, the "C" drive is on my onboard RAID controller. Probably why floppy boot disc can't find it.

Daughter's machine more normal. 2HDD's "C" & "D" IDE Channel 1 master and IDE channel 2 master respectively. The ME startup floppy does not start the machine. I says it loaded diagnostic tools to virtual drive "E" then gives an A:> prompt. I don't know where to go next with this tool to find the info you referred to in your earlier post.

Godez1.

Hey, thanks for the link. I had found this earlier but delayed making the phone call as MSFT decides whether or not the call costs $35.00 or not, they put themselves in control by getting your credit card first, then decide.
That KB article describes the situation in Ali's machine exactly. I'm about to make that call and deliver myself to their mercy.

Surferdude:

Will do Bootlog next.

All:

My machine:

Before I do anything, looking in properties, driver details of all optical drives, of the 7 drivers listed for each drive, 3 do not have the green checkmark Icon preceeding them in the list.

they are third party drivers, all unsigned, installed by optical drive writing programs? The three are:

ASAPIW2K.sys By: Pinnicale
CDRDRV.SYS By: VOB Computersysteme GmbH
PxHelp20.sys By Sonic

I have both Pinnicale's Packet writing software and their movie editing software along with Sonic's "My DVD" installed. I have no idea where the VOB driver came from.

The Drivers with green checks are:

Cdrom.sys
imapi.sys
redbook.sys
stoprop.dll All by Microsoft.

Ali's Machine:
Unchecked driver:

GEARAspiWDM.sys By Gear Software

Other checked drivers, same as my machine. I don't know if the lack of those checkmarks mean the driver is not installed or not signed.

Now the kicker: She had left a game CD in her CD drive, had been playing it in ME. I noticed it and went to my computer in XP, there was the Icon at the CD drive. I clicked it and it opened. Must have fixed itself while I was sleeping. NOT... ejected the CD, reinserted it, nothing. Clicked the drive Icon, opens window to write to the CD, shows CD with 0 and 0 space. Blank but unwritable. Inserted into her CD-DVD ROM drive, Windows error message, Data corrupt or in format unreadable by Windows. This on a CD that was just read in the other drive.

Is knowing any of this any help?

Thanks to all for your interest and support.

Martin

 

Hey Surferdude: Are you kidding? I did the bootlog thing, it must have 500 or more listings of drivers that did not load. No way I could make any sense out of it. Seems that they repeat over and over. I tried to add it as an attachment but get back a window that says page can't be displayed.

Martin

 

Wow! 500 would be a lot to sort through. I normally get about 30 lines of "Failed to Load" stuff and when I sort it all out I find that nearly all of them subsequently succeed in loading later on down the time line. I use the "Find" tool and put the file string in to see if it hits on a "success loading" line. I keep the normal list (amounts to only 10 drivers) of failures for future reference when I may have some "unusual" problem so I can check and see if something new is playing with the system.

My normal (abnormal) do not load list is:

\SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\processr.sys
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Sfloppy.SYS
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\i2omgmt.SYS
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Changer.SYS
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\Cdaudio.SYS
\SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\p3.sys
\SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\amdk7.sys
\SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\intelppm.sys
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\PCIDump.SYS
\SystemRoot\System32\Drivers\lbrtfdc.SYS

If you have 500 to sort, you'd better get started early.

 

Sidebar and then I'm outta here ....

Then it did start your machine.

Re: drivers -> Not to worry - those drivers were installed and then you removed them.

You have plenty to sort out and a lot of good guidance, so I'm going to butt out for the time being. Headed out of town anyway.

Good Luck.

 

Hi All: Well, no good news, still wrestling with the problem.

I uninstalled service pack 2, my machine, results: None
Uninstalled from Allison's machine, results: None.

Reinstalled sp 2 on both machines. Results: Both machines exhibit the same symptoms as before. My DVD+/- drive will not recognize + discs. Allison's machine will not recognize any CDs or even floppy discs. Drives are there, device mgr reports no problem, just don't waste your time inserting a disc, the machine cannot read them.

I was able to get the "patch" from Microsoft (see link from goddez, this post) and installed it. On both machines.

Results: My machine: None, Allison's machine: Keyboard quit working.

Gave up and called MSFT. No charge Tech Support for patch got Allison's keyboard working after two hours on phone through regedit, had to use on screen keyboard in Windows Accessories to enter command prompt. That really is a hard way to type. Had to add upper filters value in reg key. Where the orginal went is a mystery.

Although MSFT tech was willing to continue on and try and fix the CD problems, but after 2 hrs on the 'phone, I was tired of messing with it and had other things to do. I intend to call them back tomorrow and see if they can come up with a fix.

Interesting sidelight: Tried to use the MSFT sp2 CD that I got in the mail to reinstall service pack 2, Windows tells me it is out of date, refused to install sp2. Had to download the whole thing.

Will post results of tomorrow's phone call. If anybody has any ideas let me know.

Thanks again to all.

Martin

 

This sounds like a Boot Sector Virus possibly. Have you checked for that?

 

Hey surferdude: Well, if you mean have I done a full virus scan, including boot sector, yes, I have.

My machine has Norton's anti virus and Allison's is running ezTrust, both have signatures up to date. They don't detect anything.

Anything else I should do along those lines virus wise?

Thanks,

Martin

 

No, that was a stretch anyway but I keep trying to come up with something in common that is affecting both boxes and I just though boot virus. I really didn't believe it myself.

I'll go back into mulling mode.

 

Good grief! How on earth did Catastrophy manage to zap Allison's keyboard? How could you possibly stand 2 hours on the phone with an MS tech editing the registry with the on screen keyboard? You must have a headache from hello! And you plan to call them BACK???

Martin, it's time to get out the XP cd, wave it at Catastrophy, and tell her you are NOT BLUFFING.

I'm thinking the odds of simultaneous hardware failure are minute. Even if you took a lightning strike, why would just the cd drives be gone? You ruled SP2 out of the equation, and why the brand new SP2 cd said it was "out of date "??? Knowing how meticulous (okay, persnickety! ) you are about internet security, I doubt malware or a virus hit you, and even if one did, how would it jump computers and only affect the optical drives? I keep going back to both machines while I puzzle this one over. They are networked through a router, right?

I dunno, Martin. I don't know what to suggest next. You've covered your bases. That doggone painful phone call you are going to make tomorrow will hopefully provide you with some answers. Best of luck!
Johanna
(I would wipe them both and choose WPA over that tech call you plan to make!)

 

Hey surferdude, Thinking virus is always first to me too. I do appreciate the suggestion.

Johanna: It is definitely positively absolutely not hardware failure. In Allison's machine, dual boot, both optical (CD-R/RW and DVD ROM) drives work fine in ME. In my machine, the + DVD drive that XP reports + discs at 308MB happily accepted a 1.4GB movie written on a +RW disc by Nero and ULead DVD Movie Factory that I did as a test. I assume from that, if that movie had been 4 gigs, it still would have been written.

But Windows will not let me write files to it or format it with packet writing software. Let me take that back. At one point Windows would allow 308mb of files to be written and then report the disc full. Now it won't write any.

Yes, the two machines are on a wired 3 machine LAN through a wireless access point. (never could get the wireless to broadcast through the walls here) The third machine is exhibiting no symptoms. (yet)

Johanna, when you mentioned WPA, a shudder ran up my spine and my hair stood on end. You wouldn't wish that on me would you??? I may not get any sleep tonight just thinking about WPA WPA WPA ARRRRGH!

Besides, I waved the XP CD at her and she just continued to smile her enigmatic Mona Lisa smile at me. She seems to be saying: "Ha, you don't scare me. "

I do appreciate you keeping me company on this.

Martin