CD Drives will not work

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

I cannot get my CD drives to work, they no longer recognize
when there are disks in the drives. This is a problem that
began over a month ago and has steadily gotten worse over
the past month. This affects both my main CD drive and my
CD-RW/DVD combo drive.

Initially, all I had to do was uninstall and reinstall the
drivers for the drives.

After a week or so of this it started misdetecting my
drives and started giving them nonsense labels such as
UUUUUUUUUUUU. I'd have to repeat the uninstall/reinstall
loop for the drivers several times, including several restarts.

A couple weeks later I had to add the step of placing my
WinXP installation CD in the drive when restarting in order
to get the procedure to work. Success rate also plummeted
so that initially I had to repeat the procedure 2 or 3
times to get it to work. It later went to 9 or 10 tries
before working. Misdetection of the drives also increased
signifigantly.

As of today, I went through the loop about 20 times using
different variations of the procedure, no success at all.
I then reinstalled windows using a repair installation. In
the first half of the installation it could read my CD
drive without problems. It then started not being able to
locate necessary files, asking me to find them manually.
When I tried to find them manually it would freeze for ten
or more minutes at a time. I finally had to simply cancel
finding them. In the second half of the installation, it
would not recognize my CD drive anymore. When I finally
booted up into Windows, it could not recognize my CD drive
at all.

 

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

Some additional details:

System Restore does not work at all, I get an error message
when trying to start it.

At about the same time as the CD drive problems, Standby
and Hibernate also started freezing, forcing me to use the
physical reset button on my computer.

 

[wojo]

Normally I'd say bad CD drive except that it's two different drives.

It is still possible that they need to be cleaned but that wouldn't explain
the eroneous names assigned to them. Most likely is either the IDE port on
the Mobo or hopefully, if your lucky, just the IDE driver. Does Control
Panel | System | Device Manager show any problems with either the IDE
controller or the drives themselves? Or does it not show the drives at all?

Check these first and possibly reinstall the IDE driver if that shows as not
functioning properly.

Another thing to check is that the ribbon cable is securly plugged into the
port on the Mobo and both drives.

And one last thing to check, as long as the case is opened anyway, is that
there isn't a lot of dust, dirt, etc... inside especially around the power
supply. If the power supply isn't properly vented it could be getting hot
and that could affect output. If there is not enough power output it can't
spin the disk drives.

--
If I can help you I will.
If you can help me thanks.
(e-mail address removed)
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www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

 

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

The IDE items in the device manager report no problems.
But then again, the nonfunctional CD drives report no
problems as well.

The cables are securely plugged in at all ends and the
interior only has light dust as I cleaned it back in
January while doing various upgrades. (the problems didn't
start until late February)

I'll try uninstall and reinstalling the IDE drivers though.

 

[wojo]

Try that but based on your "Additional Details" post I'm thinking a Repair
Install of Windows is in order. You'll need to do it anyway because of the
other problems it just may fix everything and it's relatively painless.
System Restore is usually easy to fix simply by disabling it rebooting and
then enabling it again but with so many separate problems...

--
If I can help you I will.
If you can help me thanks.
(e-mail address removed)
TO Email: Remove "SPAM" without the quotes

Useful Links
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www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
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www.gemal.dk/browserspy/parasites.html
Blaster Security Patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
TweakUI and other PowerToys:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

 

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

Tried uninstalling the IDE drivers. Didn't get the CD
drives to work

And now ActivityDisk is broken too *sigh* hopefully that's
something I can find an easy fix for though.

 

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

A Repair Install of Windows is the last thing I tried
before posting my call for help here.

System Restore still doesn't work, I get the following
error message when trying to open it. "The procedure entry
point RemoteAssistancePrepareSystemRestore could not be
located in the dynamic link library WINSTA.dll"

 

[wojo]

Well like I said I think your due for a repair install before anything else
"breaks" I wouldn't do a clean install just yet, unless you relish the idea
of reinstalling EVERYTHING. But a repair install can't do any harm but could
do a whole lot of good.

--
If I can help you I will.
If you can help me thanks.
(e-mail address removed)
TO Email: Remove "SPAM" without the quotes

Useful Links
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Blaster Security Patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
TweakUI and other PowerToys:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

 

[wojo]

ok I give up.
Throw the whole thing in the trash.

No just kidding but I am at a loss at this point. This is where, on my own
PC's, I would be doing a clean install but I've got everything backed up to
an extra HDD always so it isn't difficult for me to do this.

--
If I can help you I will.
If you can help me thanks.
(e-mail address removed)
TO Email: Remove "SPAM" without the quotes

Useful Links
AdAware:
www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot S & D:
www.safer-networking.org/
Check for Parasites/Worms:
www.gemal.dk/browserspy/parasites.html
Blaster Security Patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
TweakUI and other PowerToys:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

 

[Joshua BL Caldwell]

I was hoping not to hear that, but that's my conclusion as
well

 

[wojo]

ahh well. Happens to all of us sooner or later.

--
If I can help you I will.
If you can help me thanks.
(e-mail address removed)
TO Email: Remove "SPAM" without the quotes

Useful Links
AdAware:
www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spybot S & D:
www.safer-networking.org/
Check for Parasites/Worms:
www.gemal.dk/browserspy/parasites.html
Blaster Security Patch:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp
TweakUI and other PowerToys:
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

 

[Kelly]

Common issues within XP, some have workarounds and some due to recent
updates, don't as of yet:

Suggestions:

Uncheck "Enable CD recording on this drive
On the Action menu in Device Manager, click Scan for hardware changes.

Save the file below to your hard drive. Navigate to where you saved it and
double click the file. A confirmation dialog will appear when the script is
done. You may need to reboot for the change to take effect.

Restore CD/DVD in Explorer
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/xp_cd_dvd_fix.vbs

There is no disc in the drive. Please insert a writable CD into drive.
http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;q324129

HOW TO: Troubleshoot Issues That Occur When You Write Data to a CD-R or
CD-RW Optical Disc in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;q324129

CD-R Drive or CD-RW Drive Is Not Recognized As a Recordable Device
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316529

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CD
Burning\Drives

CD-ROM Drive or DVD-ROM Drive Missing After You Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/search/preview.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q320553

"Incorrect Function" Error Message When You Access the CD-ROM Drive, DVD-ROM
Drive, or CD-RW Drive
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q315350

How to Troubleshoot Issues with Reading CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD Discs
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q321641

Hardware Compatibility List
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdq/hcl/search.asp

Good luck!

 

[Kelly]

To correct that error message:

Boot into Safe Mode
Go to Start/Run and type in: inf
Scroll down to sr.inf, right click and choose install.
Reboot.