CD/DVD Drives Not Working

[bvick]

My machine was running extremely slow and I followed the suggestions of The Comodore and the machine is running much, much faster. I have another problem now though. After running all of these utilities, my CD/DVD drives will no longer read and/or write any CD/DVD's. The drives are there but when I put my CD in a drive, it won't Autorun and when I open the drive, it shows me nothing is there. The really strange things though are 1) I can see and access the drives in Safe Mode and 2) NERO utilities will test the drives and give me the names of the CD's when Windows is running in Normal mode.

I have done a lot of research on this and tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drives. Uninstalling, physically disconnecting and reconnecting the drives. The drives get reinstalled apparently fine but I cannot read anything on any disc. I have also run the registry fix that I read about removing the Upper and Lower levels on the CD/DVD.

I will say that Drive E: did recognize a CD a few minutes ago and allowed me to start installing a piece of software but when it asked for disc 2, I inserted it into the drive and the system get telling me to install a CD in Drive E:. Drive F: keeps telling me to insert a disc when there is already one in there. So, even though Drive E: worked for about 5 minutes installing the first part of this software, neither drive is working now.

Any clues, ideas, suggestions?

Billy

[Comodore]

Just to be on the safe side, crack open your case and remove and re-plug all the cables going to and from your optical drive. While you're in there, give it a good dusting (if you haven't already) with a can of compressed air. (Maybe something got loose when you were speeding up your computer, particularly if you already dusted out the case?)

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread93792.html has some interesting help. If I recall you are running windows XP? You might try Dial-a-fix (http://wiki.djlizard.net/Dial-a-fix) which fixes many known problems with 32 bit windows.

This may be worth a shot too: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314096/en-us has some more information regarding optical drive issues.

Double check that your BIOS recognizes the drive- try booting off of a CD (like your operating system CD, after changing the boot order in your Setup so CD is before hard drive) just to be sure.

Check the drive manufacturer's website for a firmware update for the drive itself.

Try swapping out the drive for another one maybe? See if it works? If its an option, trade the optical drives with the other machine in question. It would be a good idea to see if your drive works fine in another machine- and this would be a good opportunity.

If your hard drive and optical drive are on the same IDE cable, see if you can find another one to give each drive its own cable- to prevent possible conflicts. You can buy IDE cables for not much these days.

Thats about all I can think of for right now, post back with results! A fresh install of your OS would most likely solve your problem, but after all the work you did to clean up your current install, that should be saved as a last resort!

All the best,

--The Comodore

//EDIT

Oh, and try uninstalling Nero- I've seen some cases where it is the cause behind these problems. You can try reinstalling it later, I think.

Good luck,

--The Comodore

EDIT//

[bvick]

Interesting wrinkle. If I boot the computer with a CD / DVD in ONE of the drives, I can access it fine (just don't eject the media because it will not read one after that). If I boot the computer with a CD / DVD in both of the drives, the computer will read the one with the highest drive letter (Drive F: but not Drive E:). Again, if I remove the media from that drive, it will not read anything else until I reboot. That makes absolutely no sense.

Thoughts?

Billy

[Comodore]

Nothing new from me- though the firmware thing is sounding better. Try all the stuff I posted. I hope someone else comes along with some more ideas!

Good luck,

--The Comodore

[bvick]

I learned that somehow during my clean up process, IMAPI had been turned off. I went into my System Adminstration tools, turned it on, rebooted and the drives were back and working.

[Comodore]

Good work!

IMAPI sounds familiar but (honestly) I don't really know what that is! I feel silly :p I should go look it up.

All the best,

--The Comodore