I am trying to fix problems on Windows XP Home edition SP2 accessing CD or DVD discs. The system doesn't seem to recognize discs inserted into the drive. I installed a new drive, a LITEON DVD/CD re-writer, to replace an older drive that seemed to stop working. Yet, the new drive fails in a similar way to the old drive that I just replaced. The drive appears in the BIOS, in the Device Manager, and in Windows Explorer. But it doesn't recognize a new disc inserted into the drive. If I reboot the system with a disc present in the drive, then I can access the disc's contents in the usual manner, but once I eject the disc and insert another disc, then it fails to recognize the newly inserted disc. I've installed all the latest service packs and updates, and have tried to update the driver, uninstalled & reinstalled the drive via Device Manager, re-installed the NERO burning suite, removed InCD and other software that I thought might cause a device conflict/lock, all to no avail. Furthermore, burning a disc seems to work, and I can read the newly created disc on another computer.

To elaborate further on the mode of failure, when I insert a disc, I see the DVD/CD drive light go on solid for a few seconds while the hard drive light flashes a bit, suggesting something is getting loaded and executed by the OS. I also observe a subtle change of behavior in Windows Explorer, as it seems to be able to sense the presence or absence of a disc, and the type of disc (it displays either CD-Drive D: or DVD-Drive D but it never displays the content of the disc, as if something is preventing it from reaching the point where it recognizes the file system on the disc. Furthermore, Windows is configured to prompt for the action to take when a disc is inserted, yet I never observe the pop-up window prompting for a program selection.

In all cases, if I reboot the system with a disc present in the drive, I can access the disc via Windows Explorer or other applications without problems. But I can't get the system to recognize any disc when it has been inserted after the system has been booted and is running.

update firmware to latest version
google for it and make sure its the latest firmware version so make sure you get the firmware from the manufacturer website

When I installed a fresh copy of Windows XP, everything worked and the problem vanished. It must have been a problem with the instance of XP on that machine, the registry settings, conflicts with other programs, etc., yet nothing I could find in the posts, like upper filters & lower filters, fixed the problem.

i had the same problem once and yes after you install a clean version of windows xp it works,

...i missed this thread in the early stages... and there is a key.. naturally.. but i guess u do not need it now...

oh, all right then....
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom] "AutoRun"=dword:1

...if that dword is zero, then no autorun. If you reinstall windows then you're gunna reset that one to one. But that is the hard way around.

I have a very similar problem ... Where do I find the ... [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom] "AutoRun"=dword:1 on the computer ... I must have had it at some point, but you can bet that something like regcure cleaned it out

ignore that last note ... i went into regedit and found the path you suggested and the fix didn't work, it was already set at 1

Dear All,

I have actually had a similar problem, and have had almost no success in trying to isolate the problem. I don't know if it is the same thing or not, but I'm hoping that maybe some extra data might be handy...

I have a relatively new machine that has just had XP reinstalled, due to a corrupted installation. It has two DVD read-writers, one fairly old, one new. The old drive was having problems with recognising discs, much as elunow describes, but it also had problems playing DVDs as well - it looked like buffering problems. These problems got worse fairly rapidly - to the point where it became basically useless within 5 plays.

So I started using the second (new) drive, and initially it was OK, but then it started doing the same. Again, within about 5-10 disc insertions, in was basically useless. In both cases, some discs were better and worse than others (The Myth played the best, and Firefly disc 1 wouldn't play as all) - although most discs just stuttered, as if there was a buffering problem.

I asked someone to have a look at the drives, and bought an external USB drive. This drive worked perfectly for the first 10-15 DVDs insterted, then started not to respond to inserted discs (like in elunow's case), and the drive then rapidly deteriorated until it, too, was useless (although the shop very kindly took it back).

The only common link is that the DVD it started having the problems with was Medieval Total War Kingdoms (which initially took forever to to install) - but I don't know any mechanism by which a DVD can screw a drive (is there one?).

During this process, I have replaced the cable joining the drives to the mother board. By process of elimination:

It is not the cable
It is not a physical problem with the drives (not initially, at least)
Windows doesn't recognise a problem with any of the drives
None of the drives had proprietory firmware

The only thing left appears to be either the Microsoft driver, or some sort of virus which corrupts DVD drives.

Any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

Mike

PS To make things worse, though, I am now using my old computer - and its DVD drive is now misbehaving. It is not deteriorating, though, so I hope it is not the same thing....

My problem mirrors the first example exactly.

The autorun thing didnt work as it was already set to 1.

Is reinstalling XP the only option?