CD Drive won't read discs

Now that I'm in Georgia, I feel compelled to throw a couple of other dim-witted questions at you. Am still "stuck" on a potential ASPI driver conflict and was glad to hear SD2 also considered boot virus as a possibility, but these puppies are real Bulldogs.

OK, here goes ......... (1) If you have Nero on either of those boxes, what happens when you try to run the Nero Drive Info Tool? (2) Can you list for us, the CD & DVD burning software you have installed on each machine? (2a) Do you have a rough idea on order of installation for software listed in #2?

 

Hey Rockster, us Georgia Crackers got to stick together, at least, that's what I've been told. I have uploaded 5 file attachments, Nero Info, I have more, but have no idea if you are going to get to see them as there is no indication in post preview that the files are actually attached. I'll send the post to see what happens. If I can't get them to you this way, please let me know if I can email them to you.

Appreciate your patience

Martin

Edit, I see the attachments made it, I'll try to send the rest now.

 

Here are the rest of the screens I captured.

The third screen on the first of the uploads is with the DVD+ disc that I had recorded to using Ulead. The other DVD +/- discs shown on the disc screens are blank new disks.

Strange, isin't it??

Martin

 

Still no clue but a couple more questions. Assume Nero is correct and your signature is out of date now that you have 3 opticals. Can you or have you set your plain DVD drive to DMA enabled? Are you still using the same Via 4 in 1 drivers that now appear to have been overwritten by Microsoft? Ever consider updating these? Was Pinnacle, Sonic or Nero6 the last software that you loaded?

No answers yet, just questions from these quarters. Surferdude2 originally commented on your IDE/ATAPI drivers and he knows a lot more than I re: XP OS - hopefully, further comments may be forthcoming from him.

Catastrophie appears to be quite the darling - **** tough to figure out, huh?

 

Good Morning All

Rockster: I have 4 optical drives.

Pinnacle was the last software loaded.

Can't find a way to DMA the plain DVD ROM optical or determine it's setting.

I have not tried to update the 4 in 1 Via drivers, maybe I should?

Will go to Via site & see if update available.

I don't know what you mean by "signature out of date "

Thanks for your head scratching, maybe this nonsense can be deciphered.

Tried to play a commercial DVD last night, Video plays, no sound in any of the 3 DVD (+,-,ROM) drives.

Martin

 

Good morning All:

Some good news.

Allison's computer:

All drives recognized! Sony's bundled (with CRX1611 CD-R/RW drive, B's Clip Version: 6, 21, 100, 1396) packet writing software apparently conflicting with SP2.

Fix: Uninstall B's Clip and B's Recorder Gold.
Uninstall: CD-R/RW, DVD ROM, Floppie drives.
Reboot, New hardware installed,
Reboot again, All drives now available.

Some not so good news:

My Computer:

Still no solution to the NEC + drive, other formats on this drive and other drives OK. I suspect similar problem SP 2 related. I have tried the above type of fix on my machine, Windows will not recognize blank + discs.

Then installed updated copy of Nero's InCd, no joy. My guess, since Windows cannot recognize discs, Nero's packet writing software cannot see them either.

I updated the VIA 4-in 1 Drivers, no help.

I suspect too that Pinnacle's Studio Version 9 Plus, Video movie making software, is the culprit, but getting support from their site for this expensive program is proving very difficult for me.

Still searching for a fix.

Any additional suggestions will be appreciated.

Martin

 

Hi All: Some progress to report.

Afterfter uninstalling Nero's InCD and Reinstalling Pinnacle's InstantWrite, I can now format DVD+RWs to their full capacity. I'm not really sure that this fixed this aspect of it, I've done so many attempted tweaks to get it to work. Maybe this in combination with Lord knows what else.

But the game is not over yet, as DVD+R still are read as 308mb.

Just wanted to update, and counter Rockster's thoughts that I give up too easily. Still fighting it, round 15.

Thanks to all who have tried to help.

Forgot to tell you that during all this, my CPU cooling fan went bad, it would run alright at startup, then the computer would shut down thanks to MOBO, I had a heck of a time, when I looked at it it was running fine, but unknown to me, just before MOBO shutdown it would stop. On boot the darn thing would run ok, kept me guessing for a long time, till I saw CPU temp on boot at 179F. After that, I kept my eye on the fan and watched it slow to a crawl just before shutdown.

Had an extra in the garage, replaced, all ok.

Martin

 

Hey all - I checked out this thread after googling my DVD-ROM problem (the same as Allison's) and I just wondered if Martinr121 could clarify the fix a little more for me.

Martinr121 wrote:
Fix: Uninstall B's Clip and B's Recorder Gold.
Uninstall: CD-R/RW, DVD ROM, Floppie drives.
Reboot, New hardware installed,
Reboot again, All drives now available.

So, you uninstalled the cd burning software (in my case recordnow), then you uninstalled the cd-r/rw, dvd rom and floppies - can you explain how you did that? In device manager? I never upgraded to SP1 (wait and see attitude) but the other day both my DVD ROM drive and DVD+R drive stopped being able to read disks. I'd like to try Martinr121's fix, just want to make sure I'm doing it right. Thanks!
- albionmoon

 

Hey Albionmoon: Welcome to the board, the best there is.

Sorry to hear you are having the same problem that Allison had on her machine. It is aggravating.

I assume you did not yet install service pack 2? That seemed to be at the root of the problem, not for sure, but I think so.

I'd try first uninstalling and reinstalling the drives, leaving your burning software in place. If that works, you won't have the extra work of doing that with the burning software, and if no service pack 2 that may not be necessary.

Go to your device manager, click your CD ROM drives, then right click one at at a time. In the drop down menu, click "Uninstall ". You will get a warning message, click ok or yes, the drive will disappear. Then do the same with the other drive. Reboot. Windows should find the new hardware and install the drivers. You will then get a message that the "new" hardware has been installed but may not work properly until you restart. Restart the machine. Check the drives, see if ok. If OK, go on your merry way.

If not, try uninstalling the burning software and go through the proceedure again.

Good luck, let us know the outcome.

Martin

 

Martin -

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I tried uninstalling w/o removing the burning software and still no luck. The odd thing about this situation is that I can trick my computer into seeing the drives - I put a dvd or cd in the drive, it comes up blank, then I open an application like media player and I can get it to read the disk and even pop up in explorer. However, the "trick" won't let me burn a cd or dvd.

I will try removing my burning software (i have both recordnow and roxio cd creator) and do the uninstall/reboot method. Hopefully that will take care of it. I've been reluctant to make a lot of changes to my system lately because my System Restore is not working - it's turned on for all my drives and I can make restore points, but when I try to restore, it goes through the whole proceedure and then ends up saying that it can't restore and no changes have been made. I wanted to do that first - take it back to before I started having this problem, but no dice.

Thanks for you advice - I hope it works.

Take care -

albionmoon

 

Hey Albion, I hope it works too. I had all kinds of problems with CD Creator on Windows XP Home OS. I finally had to get rid of it to get my optical drives to work at all. I did not have the optical drive problem until SP2. Seems like I'm not the only one!!

Wishing you good luck!

 

Martin -

well, removing record now and cd creator and then uninstalling the drives does seem to have worked! The drives now show up fine and I've reinstalled the roxio software and so far so good. XP did have "serious errors" related to drivers on the first couple reboots, but it seems to have calmed down. Guess I'll play that one by ear. Thanks again for all your help - after exhaustive searching on the internet for a resolution (including MS and HP sites), this BBS was the only one that had real solutions to this problem - though it seems several other calls for help were out there in cyberspace. Hope all is well - take care!

- albionmoon

 

Hey Albionmoon: Glad to hear you got it fixed. Told you, this board is the best.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/285910 is another possible solution to that driver problem:

Marttin

 

Fixed! Finally! My machine can now recognize and write to DVD+R Discs.

There is a story behind this though. Read on if you are interested.

On Friday morning last, I booted my machine and smelled something funny. I glanced over at the tower and saw smoke rising from the NEC drive. (have see through side panel) I quickly pulled the plug from the UPS, smoke abated for a while and then quit. Opened the case and pulled the drive out. It was rather warm and smelled of fried components.

Called NEC for RMA, they told me to call vendor, Tiger Direct. Tiger Direct says warranty from NEC. Two days on phone got RMA credit from Tiger.

Disgusted while warranty battle ongoing called NewEgg, ordered a Plextor drive which arrived this morning. Installed in NEC slot, hooked up cables and fired up machine. Inserted DVD+R Disc. Pinnacle's Instant Write reports 308mb. uninstall-reinstall software, same story from Instant Write.

Strange, as previously Instant Write had performed flawlessly.

Re-uninstalled Instant Write, ran Regseeker, got rid of all IR entries.

Popped in software disc that came with Plextor drive. Roxio's "Drag & Drop" installed. Popped in DVD+R disc that had previously been in NEC drive with IR. D&D reports error on disc, do I want to run their Scandisc & repair? I say yes.
Program runs, reports, no salvagable data, but disc repaired. Open drive in "My Computer ", reports 4.37GB free space.

Pop in new, never in NEC drive, DVD+R disc, opens in Explorer, reports 4.37GB free.

So Rockster, you who thought I was giving up, aren't you proud of me sticking with it??

Thanks to all who helped on this very tough problem that finally got solved by a drive almost catching fire and a warranty dispute that drove me to order the Plextor.

Martin

 

martinr121, we are all proud of you for being so tenacious. You must admit that luck was on your side in the end.

You were lucky to be present when the magic smoke was released from the faulty drive.

A friend of mine is fond of that saying, "All electronic gadgets work due to having magic smoke encapsulated inside. Once you release that magic smoke, they no longer work." You got lucky and got to view magic in the making.

Best regards.

 

Martin -

You have made my day (I know, its just getting started) - I had this figured for conflicting software and a bunch of left-over registry problems even though I tried to be careful about what I said while posting to this thread. Haven't said much until now because I had nothing of substance to add that might have helped. However, I'm very pleased to learn that you nailed it or should I say "smoked it "? The part that I could never figure out was the similar (as first reported) behavior of your daughter's machine.

So my friend, congratulations are in order.

I too have had problems with Tiger - never have bought much from them, but they mis-shipped an incorrect item and it took me a couple of weeks, several calls, too many emails and a formal complaint to get things squared away - that was my last ever transaction with them.

Final sidebar re: smoking components - about 4 weeks ago I was replacing a (too short of range) wireless keyboard and mouse with a wired keyboard/wireless mouse combo. Turned the machine off, pulled the old PS2 connectors, plugged in the new PS2 connectors and hit the power switch - all hell broke loose. Sparks, smoke, popping - yup, fried a power supply with a keyboard? If someone told me this was possible, I would never believe it, but having it happen made a believer out of me. Go figure ..... Worst part was, I bought several of these keyboard/mouse units and this was the first one I used. Tested em' all out afterward on an old box and none of the others failed or caused any fireworks - tried the bad one again on the old box and guess what - yup - another power supply.

Glad you are back up and running. Again, my congratulations.

 

Hi All: Happy Thanksgiving!

Surferdude: I Your friend with the Magic Smoke theory is definitely a genius. I have had a lot of electronics have their Magic Smoke escape over the years, but I always thought it was from frying components. If I had only known, I could have captured and saved the Magic Smoke and stuck it back in, thereby repairing the item.

I'm going to put all my electronics in ZipLock baggies, that Magic Smoke won't get away again.

Hey Rockster: Happy to have "Made your day ". That made my day for sure yesterday. Sorry to hear you fried two power supplies, seems sad if you have a defective component the only way to discover it is to fry it. Maybe, if you had only captured the Magic Smoke..........

On the Tiger Direct issue, I have bought components from them for 5 years, have had to RMA a couple of items, never a problem. I think in the NEC case, it was a genuine misunderstanding between them and NEC. To Tiger's credit, they agreed to eat the drive. And in fact that only took from my first call till the next day. Besides, if the dispute hadn't arisen, I'd probably still be battling the 308MB problem, so for me at least, it was a stroke of luck.

Thanks again to all who chimed in on this issue.

Martin

 

Same problem only different!

I just found this forum, finally people who are discussing this problem intelligently! I have a problem similar to Martins, perhaps stranger:

I just got a new Alienware computer -- all factory components, came with Windows XP (service pack 2). My old computer was an HP running Windows 98, and to make it more interesting, we have an Old old laptop running Windows 95. We had had no problems at all between the old laptop and the HP, have been running them for years.

I had a compact disk reader in the USB port of the HP, which I switched to the Alienware when we set it up. The Alienware read the disk fine, and read from its floppy drive fine. I loaded some big programs (Office, Photoshop etc) onto the Alienware over the next couple of days, then loaded up some old programs like paintbrush and some games from old floppies onto the Alienware. Then I tried to get my games program from the HP onto a floppy so I could bring them to the Alienware; not enough room. So I unhooked the USB compact flash from the Alienware and plugged it into the HP for more space for the transfer. HP says "Disk not formatted" !!!! So I took the Compact Flash back to the Alienware and now IT says "Disk not formatted "!!! AAAAA! My daughter's novel, pictures, screenplays, etc are all on the compact flash!!

Not to worry...she also has them on 3.5 floppies (created on the laptop and sometimes worked on on the HP). So we put one of the floppies into the Alienware, it has trouble opening it and jams (but we do get a reading of what is on the disk); when we try again it just says "Disk not formatted ". AAAAA! So we try on the HP, it also says "Disk not formatted ". So I try another, innocent 3.5 disk on the HP, it opens it. I try the questionable disk: "Disk not formatted" then I try the innocent disk again: "Disk not formatted "!!!!!

Now both computers will not read anything from their floppy drives. I get a series of error messages, including "Insert disk into drive A ", "Disk in Drive A does not have ID" and the ever pleasing "Disk not formatted ". If I try to format a floppy disk (a disk with dispensible files on it) I get an error message either that the disk is not accessible or that I don't have authorization to access the disk. On both computers.

I called Alienware, spoke to three different techs over the course of the day, none had heard of a similar problem before. Sounded like a virus to me; ran two diffrent virus programs; no viruses. Reloaded the Windows XP package; no improvement. Reset the Alienware back to before the problem; no improvement. Uninstalled all the programs I had put on between the time the Alienware ran right and started having problems: no improvement.

We are too scared to try any of the floppies that have been in the other computers in the laptop: it is OLD and has only the floppy drive, no USB ports, no CD ROM. If its floppy goes, we can't communicate with it! It will still read floppies that have never been in the other machines.

So last night I reformatted the whole Alienware computer from the CDs provided with it. I don't have any absolutely clean (never been in Windows 95 or 98) floppy disks here at home, so I am waiting to go to work to get some that have been used in my Windows WP work computer to see if the Alienware floppy drive will read them. BUT now that I have found this forum, I am thinking maybe I should unistall the service pack 2 on my Alienware before I put in any floppies? What does service pack 2 do? I remember my daughter's boyfriend, who helped us set up the Alienware, looking at the Windows packacge and saying "Service Pack 2, I don't like that." but I never thought about it again till I saw this site this morning.

Last night my daughter's boyfriend took the compact flash and the floppy disks to his computer, and was able to read only the first disk he put in. (there are 3 disks with the novel on them, the one he used first was a different disk than the one we had put in the Alienware first). After that, his computer started giving him the same messages when he tried to read the other floppies, and when he plugged in the compact disk, it read "Not formatted ". He is running Windows XP but I don't know the details. So either it is something catching that damages the software for the drives, or one or more of the floppy disks actually physically damages the A drive and in addition, the compact flash somehow was completely erased and unformatted when we weren't looking.

I am only a pilgrim when it comes to the internal workings of these infernal machines... from your experience above, what should I do to try to make sure the Alienware will work properly? Anyone have an idea of what is the best approach to try to retrieve my daughter's files from the compact flash or the 3.5" floppies? How do I get the HP to read floppies again? Why is this happening?

Martin, hope you are still out there!

 

Hi Johnwopus: Welcome to the board. Yes, I'm still here, will be for all the future years while I'm still alive, until computers run unattended, never develop problems, and when they do, they fix themselves. Hmm, is that an oxymoron?

Really sorry you are experiencing the problem, similar to the one I had. I have seen others similar on the board, but the first I've seen involving a USB Compact Flash card.

My problem started with being unable to read/write/format CDs or DVDs on my computer or CDs, DVDs, Floppies on my daughter's computer. both computers running XP Home and both problems occurred after installation of XP Service Pack 2, but uninstalling it did not cure the problem. I would not recommend uninstalling it.

And, obviously, SP2 wouldn't have affected your HP running 98. This is really a puzzle.

The first thing I would try would be to uninstall/reinstall the Floppy Disc Controller.

How to: Right click "My Computer" on the drop down menu, click "Properties" click "Hardware ", click "Device Manager" click the + sign next to "Floppy Disc Controllers ", right click the controller name, click "uninstall" ignore the warning and click ok. This will also uninstall the Floppy Drive. Reboot the machine, it will reinstall the controller and the drive as new hardware, and may require you to reboot the machine again. When finished the last restart, put one of those discs with data on it that you don't care about in the Floppy drive and see what happens. If this works, I would do the same thing on the 98 machine.


Question, you did not mention CD read problems, are your CD drives OK on either, both, machines?

Also, find out what chipset your Alienware motherboard is using? I would go the Chipset Mfg's web site and download/install their latest drivers.

Have you looked in Event Viewer, System? Any error messages there might give a clue as to what is going on. (click Start, Administrative Tools> Event Viewer> System.) Right click on any errors, click properties, If it seems germane, related to the problem, click the icon below the arrow, open a response to this message, right click, click paste. This will place the error message in your response. Do it with any errors that seem related.

For some unknown reason in a number of machines, SP2 impacts drives that use removable media. MSFT has published a KB article regarding the issue, but their site is down this morning. The fix involves a registry hack. If you are comfortable in doing this, I can send directions. Let me know.

One more question: Do you have any CD writing or packet writing software on the machine? If so, what?

Let us know what happens, I wish you good fortune, I certainly hope your daughter's novel is not lost.

Even so, when you get the Floppy working again, (and you will, don't panic) there may be a way to recover the data.


Martin

 

Will go home and see

Thanks, Martin! I am at work now but will try floppies created in my machine at work (Windows XP) in the Alienware tonight, which should be as brand new now, to test whether the A drive works at all. I will try your fixes on the HP (Windows 98)

The CD drives (I have a DVD R/W and a CD R/W) on the Alienware seemed fine (come to think of it, we weren't using them during the time we were panicking about the floppy and compact flash...) until the very end, when I was talking to the tech on the phone and we were planning to reformat the hard drive. Maybe the computer heard me talking! Shades of HAL! When I put the Windows XP disc into the drive in preparation for closing it down, I put it into the CD drive, and then the computer pushed out the DVD drive and said "insert disk ", so I put it into the DVD drive, and the computer pushed out the CD drive and said "insert disk" ! So I put it into the CD drive and somehow got it to stay closed (closed the Explorer window, maybe) and then turned off the machine to start the reformat.

The Alienware is running Nero for the CD and DVD burner.

Will post an update after my next bout with the computers at home.

Thanks again