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Hi,
I have a Dell Dimension 8300 (Yes I know Dell sucks, please don't remind me). I bought a new Lite-On burner (DH-20A4H) to go with my NEC RWer.I had new NERO 7 installed and everything was working to burn dvd's, and my other cd-rw was fine.
But I uninstalled NERO 7 after it (bundled stuff on cd was also installed) conflicted with codexs (my tversity). The cd and dvd burners worked fine after that as players/readers only.
NOW THE PROBLEM...after a month I wanted to burn some dvd's again so my idea was to install only the necessary driver from the bundled NERO 7 disc. By accident I installed an older Nero disc from the past, for windows 95-2000. I have XP. Immediately it encountered an error in the installation. So I uninstalled it in order to install the proper NERO 7......
Now both dvd-burner and cd/rw won't read anything. I can hear them making noise when I put them in, but it is not reading them. I tried a number of cd's orig music and data. I'll put a disc in, but it tells me to enter a disc while it is in. The devices are there in device manager (with no yellow "!") and their names identifying brand and model too. No "errors" of any sort show up (ie. error 31, or 19 etc.) I tried uninstalling the drives and re-starting windows which re-discovers the hardware but ends up the same way. I also deleted the Upper and Lower filters, with same result.
PLEASE HELP. Thanks.
ZEUS
PS-considering I can't install the NERO 7 cd now, should I download the driver from Lite-on and install that...might that work? (I don't know how it will help my cd-rw drive though). Furthermore, it's and rar file and don't have a rar reader....any suggestions?

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Dani AI

Generated

Good find, — that iTunes pop-up is the smoking gun. When iTunes said the “registry settings … for burning CD/DVDs are missing,” it meant a burning-related component (a registry entry or user-mode driver) that Windows normally uses to access discs had been removed or overridden. Running iTunes loads that component into memory, which explains why the drives worked only while iTunes was running.

A safe, practical recovery plan:

  • Make a System Restore point and export the registry key below before changing anything.
  • Uninstall all burning software (all Nero installs, any Roxio, etc.) and reboot.
  • Use the vendor cleanup tool for Nero (Nero CleanTool / Nero General CleanTool) to remove leftover filters/ASPI layers, then reboot.
  • In Device Manager uninstall the optical drives, reboot so Windows redetects them.
  • Reinstall iTunes (the XP-compatible installer) first — since it restored access for you — then reinstall the correct Nero 7 (XP build) only if you still need it.
  • If installers fail, run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt with your XP CD available to restore OS components, then reboot and test.

If that still fails, check these specifics in regedit (backup first):
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Make sure UpperFilters and LowerFilters are not present (or are correct) and verify the CD-ROM service (HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom) has Start=1. If those registry entries look intact but drives still fail, restore to a System Restore point dated before the accidental installer, or perform a Windows repair install.

Quick diagnostics and cautions: confirm the drives appear in BIOS and try booting from a known-good boot CD to isolate hardware vs. software. Don’t flash firmware unless you’re sure the drive is faulty — bad firmware updates can brick a drive. For .rar packages (Lite‑On firmware or utilities) use 7‑Zip or WinRAR to extract them before running; the manufacturer “driver” is often a firmware updater or utility, not a Windows device driver.

Member Avatar for ZEUS9898

I figured something out by luck.
I open Itunes by chance, and it immediately had a warning pop-up "The registry settings used by the iTunes drivers for imp. & burning CD/DVD's are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall iTunes." I then just clicked OK in that box, and itunes opened and worked fine.
It found a music cd in the drive and all the songs, but more importantly My Computer was able to see both drives and I even put the proper Nero 7 disc in and was ready to install it.
I had a problem reinstalling itunes though...and after restarting the computerl, itunes had the warning pop-up again. But either way as long as itunes is running in the background. I can finally used my dvd and cd drives.

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