CD/DVD (2 separate drives) both behaving weirdly in win2k

[master]

My once perfectly-reasonably behaving optical drives on a Windows 2000
computer started behaving weirdly about two months ago. One is a
Plextor CD writer purchased in 2001, and one is a Liteon DVD writer
purchased in 2004.

The Liteon accepts media, but after about five seconds of the drive
light being on, shuts down and nothing else happens. In My Computer
explorer, the name of the media loaded in the drive never appears.

The Plextor appears to work a bit better, but not in the way I'd
expect. Media names appear in My Computer's explorer, but the drive
just whirs and whirs and whirs (I've let it go 15 minutes and can't
stand waiting longer) without autoplaying as I'd expect (and yes, the
appropriate registry autoplay value is set to 1). I don't think we've
been able to successfully install off of a CD in the two months this
problem has existed (we get a lot of kids' games from the library, and
have done a lot of installing of these things, successfully, in the
past). Games already on the computer play okay if there's a shortcut
icon on the computer from which to launch the game, but again, the
autorun doesn't work. Sometimes, using Windows Explorer when there's
a CD in the drive will virtually lock the computer.

It's not a virus. I have used McAfee's Stinger, and have a
regularly-updated NAV 2004 that runs twice a week on the computer, and
it's clean.

Not spyware. I run Ad-Aware and Spybot, both regularly updated, and
all they find is the occasional web browser tracking cookie, nothing
more malicious than that. I've tried Hijackthis and nothing in its
log looks weird to me.

I've physically opened the computer, disconnected the drives,
reconnected them, and that's not fixed the problem.

I've uninstalled the devices using the hardware wizard, restarted the
computer, let Windows reinstall them, and the problems persist.

A pretty thorough search of google groups and the google archive
itself has shown that many others have had similar problems, but I've
not read a resolution that works.

So here I am, asking for a miracle - some idea for me to try, that I
haven't tried already, that might make these things start working
again.

 

[beenthere]

My once perfectly-reasonably behaving optical drives on a Windows 2000
computer started behaving weirdly about two months ago. One is a
Plextor CD writer purchased in 2001, and one is a Liteon DVD writer
purchased in 2004.
Snipped

So here I am, asking for a miracle - some idea for me to try, that I
haven't tried already, that might make these things start working
again.

Deal with One at a time !.
Disconnect one and do a test on it, then try the other.
At 5 years old tho` the Plextor could be on its last legs.

 

[Peaches]

My once perfectly-reasonably behaving optical drives on a Windows 2000
computer started behaving weirdly about two months ago. One is a
Plextor CD writer purchased in 2001, and one is a Liteon DVD writer
purchased in 2004.

The Liteon accepts media, but after about five seconds of the drive
light being on, shuts down and nothing else happens. In My Computer
explorer, the name of the media loaded in the drive never appears.

The Plextor appears to work a bit better, but not in the way I'd
expect. Media names appear in My Computer's explorer, but the drive
just whirs and whirs and whirs (I've let it go 15 minutes and can't
stand waiting longer) without autoplaying as I'd expect (and yes, the
appropriate registry autoplay value is set to 1). I don't think we've
been able to successfully install off of a CD in the two months this
problem has existed (we get a lot of kids' games from the library, and
have done a lot of installing of these things, successfully, in the
past). Games already on the computer play okay if there's a shortcut
icon on the computer from which to launch the game, but again, the
autorun doesn't work. Sometimes, using Windows Explorer when there's
a CD in the drive will virtually lock the computer.

It's not a virus. I have used McAfee's Stinger, and have a
regularly-updated NAV 2004 that runs twice a week on the computer, and
it's clean.

Not spyware. I run Ad-Aware and Spybot, both regularly updated, and
all they find is the occasional web browser tracking cookie, nothing
more malicious than that. I've tried Hijackthis and nothing in its
log looks weird to me.

I've physically opened the computer, disconnected the drives,
reconnected them, and that's not fixed the problem.

I've uninstalled the devices using the hardware wizard, restarted the
computer, let Windows reinstall them, and the problems persist.

A pretty thorough search of google groups and the google archive
itself has shown that many others have had similar problems, but I've
not read a resolution that works.

So here I am, asking for a miracle - some idea for me to try, that I
haven't tried already, that might make these things start working
again.

Digital Rights Management? rootkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

 

[Vanguard]

My once perfectly-reasonably behaving optical drives on a Windows 2000
computer started behaving weirdly about two months ago. One is a
Plextor CD writer purchased in 2001, and one is a Liteon DVD writer
purchased in 2004.

The Liteon accepts media, but after about five seconds of the drive
light being on, shuts down and nothing else happens. In My Computer
explorer, the name of the media loaded in the drive never appears.

The Plextor appears to work a bit better, but not in the way I'd
expect. Media names appear in My Computer's explorer, but the drive
just whirs and whirs and whirs (I've let it go 15 minutes and can't
stand waiting longer) without autoplaying as I'd expect (and yes, the
appropriate registry autoplay value is set to 1). I don't think we've
been able to successfully install off of a CD in the two months this
problem has existed (we get a lot of kids' games from the library, and
have done a lot of installing of these things, successfully, in the
past). Games already on the computer play okay if there's a shortcut
icon on the computer from which to launch the game, but again, the
autorun doesn't work. Sometimes, using Windows Explorer when there's
a CD in the drive will virtually lock the computer.

It's not a virus. I have used McAfee's Stinger, and have a
regularly-updated NAV 2004 that runs twice a week on the computer, and
it's clean.

Not spyware. I run Ad-Aware and Spybot, both regularly updated, and
all they find is the occasional web browser tracking cookie, nothing
more malicious than that. I've tried Hijackthis and nothing in its
log looks weird to me.

I've physically opened the computer, disconnected the drives,
reconnected them, and that's not fixed the problem.

I've uninstalled the devices using the hardware wizard, restarted the
computer, let Windows reinstall them, and the problems persist.

A pretty thorough search of google groups and the google archive
itself has shown that many others have had similar problems, but I've
not read a resolution that works.

So here I am, asking for a miracle - some idea for me to try, that I
haven't tried already, that might make these things start working
again.

How many drives (floppy, hard disk, optical) do you have connected? Did
you add any drives about 2 or 3 months ago? If you added any internal
devices around that time that are connected to the case power supply,
maybe you've put too much in for the capacity of the power supply (and
sometimes power supplies do degrade). Get a multimeter and measure the
voltages on the power taps inside to make sure they are within
tolerance. The power supply provides the blood for your computer and
may cause problems if you try to spread it too thinly.

What happens when you boot into Windows' Safe Mode? Don't try
installing anything but just try using the CD and DVD drives. When
booting the computer with a bootable CD in either the CD or DVD drive,
can you boot from it (providing you configure the BIOS to boot from that
device)? Again, disconnect the other optical drive to test if the
remaining one can be used to boot from it (your BIOS probably only lets
you boot from a CD drive so it will use the first one of that type that
it finds). That would show if the hardware is okay outside of Windows
or any other operating system.

 

[master]

On Sun, 14 May 2006 15:32:55 +0100, "Peaches"

[snip]

Digital Rights Management? rootkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

I'm using RootkitRevealer right now. No problems found at this early
point.

 

[master]

Deal with One at a time !.
Disconnect one and do a test on it, then try the other.
At 5 years old tho` the Plextor could be on its last legs.

I'm trying something else for now, prior to the PITA of opening the
computer up and disconnecting devices (I'm screwdriver-challenged).

FWIW, I put a music CD into the Plextor and it immediately launced WMP
and began playing.

Putting the same CD into the Liteon gave me the behavior that crept in
in the past two months - drive light lit for a few seconds, went out,
and the CD wasn't recognized.

 

[Peaches]

On Sun, 14 May 2006 15:32:55 +0100, "Peaches"

[snip]

Digital Rights Management? rootkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

I'm using RootkitRevealer right now. No problems found at this early
point.

Is it media that once played but is now problematic?
Or is it a case of some media that always played, still play?
And some media that have never played?
If so, have you updated the firmware for each drive?
http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

http://www.techzonez.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3867.html

http://www.plextor.com/English/support/support_downloads.html

 

[master]

On Sun, 14 May 2006 15:32:55 +0100, "Peaches"

[snip]

Digital Rights Management? rootkit?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html

I'm using RootkitRevealer right now. No problems found at this early
point.

Is it media that once played but is now problematic?
Or is it a case of some media that always played, still play?
And some media that have never played?
If so, have you updated the firmware for each drive?
http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php

http://www.techzonez.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3867.html

http://www.plextor.com/English/support/support_downloads.html

Just as a comprehensive update, I'm posting a reply to my initial
post, separately from this.

 

[master]

Okay, I did some more investigation, and here's what I've found:

- Commercially-made audio CDs, put into the Plextor drive, quickly
launch Windows Media Player and play.
- I took a game that was problematic on this machine and put it into
the CD/DVD drive on a relatively new XP machine I have. It took
longer than I'd have expected, maybe 30-60 seconds, but the welcome
splash screen and invitation to install did come up eventually,
automatically. And the installation went slowly (this is on a 2.5 GHz
XP machine with one meg of memory), but it did complete. The game in
question is called Putt Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise (I'm ashamed to
admit), and is by Atari from 2003.
- I then took an installation disk from something I'd just installed
on the XP machine, and put it into the Plextor drive on my 2000
machine. The CD was instantly recognized and the installation process
went fast and fine.
- Finally, I took the Putt Putt CD (the one that slowly but eventually
had installed on an XP machine) and put it into the Plextor drive on
the 2000 machine. It grunted and strained for 5-10 minutes
(guessing), and finally threw up a dialog box that said "Autorun.exe
has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to
restart the program. An error log is being created."

So the bottom lines are that the Liteon DVD drive seems to not work (I
might troubleshoot this later), the Plextor CD drive seems to be fine
with music CDs and with one program CD I put into it, but has a
problem with an Atari game that I've demonstrated does work and
install on a different computer. The Plextor drive also seems to burn
music and data CDs fine.

Since autorun.exe is a file on the CD (the Atari Putt Putt CD in this
case), is there a part of Windows 2000 that is supposed to handle
autorun.exe that is itself hosed? Again though, remember that another
software installation disk installed fine, including autorun, on this
machine and with this drive.

Also, WHERE, exactly, would I find the error log that was created when
autorun.exe generated errors?

Thanks for the help I've received so far.

 

[master]

Also, WHERE, exactly, would I find the error log that was created when
autorun.exe generated errors?

I did a little digging and found a log file in a directory called
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson (side note:
DrWatson? I have NO idea what this software is, or ever installing
it. But the log file is massive and seems to have captured every
abnormal ending to a program going back 15 months on this computer).
The log file was called drwtsn32.log. The time stamp on it seems to
coincide exactly with when I got the error message.

The portion relevant to this adend follows, and I'd welcome an
interpretation of what it all means.

Application exception occurred:
App: (pid=1684)
When: 5/14/2006 @ 13:18:15.360
Exception number: c0000006 (in page io error)

*----> System Information <----*
Computer Name: W2000
User Name: Administrator
Number of Processors: 1
Processor Type: x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1
Windows 2000 Version: 5.0
Current Build: 2195
Service Pack: 4
Current Type: Uniprocessor Free
Registered Organization: None
Registered Owner: [my name]

*----> Task List <----*
0 Idle.exe
8 System.exe
224 SMSS.exe
252 CSRSS.exe
248 WINLOGON.exe
300 SERVICES.exe
312 LSASS.exe
464 svchost.exe
492 CCSETMGR.exe
520 CCEVTMGR.exe
648 spoolsv.exe
676 AluSchedulerSvc.exe
716 svchost.exe
744 NAVAPSVC.exe
816 regsvc.exe
844 SAVSCAN.exe
916 mstask.exe
956 stisvc.exe
992 symlcsvc.exe
1040 PQV2iSvc.exe
1060 WinMgmt.exe
1064 svchost.exe
1308 AKProg.exe
1324 hpztsb04.exe
1332 igfxtray.exe
1344 hkcmd.exe
1352 PDVDServ.exe
1396 Dit.exe
1424 UMonit2K.exe
1436 DitExp.exe
1460 jusched.exe
1468 CCAPP.exe
1488 PlaxoHelper.exe
1512 wlancfg5.exe
1540 wkcalrem.exe
1148 explorer.exe
948 firefox.exe
1684 autorun.exe
1628 DRWTSN32.exe
0 _Total.exe

(00400000 - 00424000)
(77F80000 - 77FFC000)
(7C570000 - 7C623000)
(77E10000 - 77E79000)
(77F40000 - 77F7C000)
(7CF30000 - 7D176000)
(7C2D0000 - 7C335000)
(77D30000 - 77DA8000)
(70A70000 - 70AD6000)
(78000000 - 78045000)
(71710000 - 71794000)
(77570000 - 775A0000)
(732E0000 - 73305000)

State Dump for Thread Id 0x21c

eax=00000000 ebx=7ffdf000 ecx=00010101 edx=ffffffff esi=00000000
edi=00000000
eip=00408a4c esp=0012ffc4 ebp=0012fff0 iopl=0 nv up ei pl zr
na po nc
cs=001b ss=0023 ds=0023 es=0023 fs=0038 gs=0000
efl=00000246


function: <nosymbols>
00408a3e 8d42fd lea eax,[edx+0xfd]
ds:012d9ee5=????????
00408a41 5e pop esi
00408a42 5f pop edi
00408a43 5b pop ebx
00408a44 c3 ret
00408a45 8d42fc lea eax,[edx+0xfc]
ds:012d9ee5=????????
00408a48 5e pop esi
00408a49 5f pop edi
00408a4a 5b pop ebx
00408a4b c3 ret
FAULT ->00408a4c 55 push ebp
00408a4d 8bec mov ebp,esp
00408a4f 6aff push 0xff
00408a51 6860224100 push 0x412260
00408a56 68fcca4000 push 0x40cafc
00408a5b 64a100000000 mov eax,fs:[00000000]
fs:00000000=????????
00408a61 50 push eax
00408a62 64892500000000 mov fs:[00000000],esp
fs:00000000=????????
00408a69 83ec58 sub esp,0x58
00408a6c 53 push ebx
00408a6d 56 push esi
00408a6e 57 push edi

*----> Stack Back Trace <----*

FramePtr ReturnAd Param#1 Param#2 Param#3 Param#4 Function Name
0012FFC0 7C598989 00000000 00000000 7FFDF000 C0000006 !<nosymbols>
0012FFF0 00000000 00408A4C 00000000 000000C8 00000100
kernel32!ProcessIdToSessionId

*----> Raw Stack Dump <----*
0012ffc4 89 89 59 7c 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 f0 fd 7f
...Y|............
0012ffd4 06 00 00 c0 c8 ff 12 00 - 0c fc 12 00 ff ff ff ff
.................
0012ffe4 54 1f 5c 7c 18 2b 57 7c - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
T.\|.+W|........
0012fff4 00 00 00 00 4c 8a 40 00 - 00 00 00 00 c8 00 00 00
.....L.@.........
00130004 00 01 00 00 ff ee ff ee - 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
00130014 00 fe 00 00 00 00 10 00 - 00 20 00 00 00 02 00 00 .........
.......
00130024 00 20 00 00 3a 02 00 00 - ff ef fd 7f 01 00 08 06 .
...:...........
00130034 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
00130044 98 05 13 00 0f 00 00 00 - f8 ff ff ff 50 00 13 00
.............P...
00130054 50 00 13 00 40 06 13 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
P...@...........
00130064 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
00130074 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
00130084 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
00130094 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300a4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300b4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300c4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300d4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300e4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................
001300f4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 - 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
.................

 

[beenthere]

I did a little digging and found a log file in a directory called
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson (side note:
DrWatson? I have NO idea what this software is, or ever installing
it. But the log file is massive and seems to have captured every
abnormal ending to a program going back 15 months on this computer).
The log file was called drwtsn32.log. The time stamp on it seems to
coincide exactly with when I got the error message.

The portion relevant to this adend follows, and I'd welcome an
interpretation of what it all means.

Application exception occurred:
App: (pid=1684)
When: 5/14/2006 @ 13:18:15.360
Exception number: c0000006 (in page io error)
Snipped

Dr Watson32 is a M$ debugging program.
When you`ve resolved your present problem, you can delete
the .log (As you can with All log files).
It looks as tho` Autorun.exe is trying to run the .inf file on the CD,
but the CD is not co-operating, hence the error.
I`ve solved this problem before, by carefully washing the CD with
washing up liquid (just the `down face`), and drying it with a very
soft cloth. Some CDs seem to develop a `bloom` on them,
and if your optical drive is not 100%, it has trouble reading.

 

[Peaches]

Apoligies for top posting, but you have nothing to lose and
everything to gain from updating the firmware for the drives.
Hardware OEM's continuely release these updates, apart
from bug fixing, the firmware update will ensure compatibilty
with the ever increasing range of differently pressed media.
I suspect your drives are just finding it tricky to read that
specific type of disk, a firmware update may well resolve the
problem.

I did a little digging and found a log file in a directory called
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\DrWatson (side note:
DrWatson? I have NO idea what this software is, or ever installing
it. But the log file is massive and seems to have captured every
abnormal ending to a program going back 15 months on this computer).
The log file was called drwtsn32.log. The time stamp on it seems to
coincide exactly with when I got the error message.

Dr Watson is an established windows tool
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308538/en-us

Now update the firmware.

 

[master]

It looks as tho` Autorun.exe is trying to run the .inf file on the CD,
but the CD is not co-operating, hence the error.
I`ve solved this problem before, by carefully washing the CD with
washing up liquid (just the `down face`), and drying it with a very
soft cloth. Some CDs seem to develop a `bloom` on them,
and if your optical drive is not 100%, it has trouble reading.

I did that, and the installer launched as soon as the CD drawer
closed. Must be the drive on this computer is just fussier!

Thanks.

 

[master]

Apoligies for top posting, but you have nothing to lose and
everything to gain from updating the firmware for the drives.
Hardware OEM's continuely release these updates, apart
from bug fixing, the firmware update will ensure compatibilty
with the ever increasing range of differently pressed media.
I suspect your drives are just finding it tricky to read that
specific type of disk, a firmware update may well resolve the
problem.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, and the patience it must have
taken to make them.

I did check, and both drives had current firmware. Turns out thta the
problem, as you'll see elsewhere in this thread, was a dirty CD. I'm
ashamed - I'd made a token effort to clean the CD earlier, but a
thorough buffing with a soft cloth proved to be the ticket.

 

[Vanguard]

Okay, I did some more investigation, and here's what I've found:

- Commercially-made audio CDs, put into the Plextor drive, quickly
launch Windows Media Player and play.
- I took a game that was problematic on this machine and put it into
the CD/DVD drive on a relatively new XP machine I have. It took
longer than I'd have expected, maybe 30-60 seconds, but the welcome
splash screen and invitation to install did come up eventually,
automatically. And the installation went slowly (this is on a 2.5 GHz
XP machine with one meg of memory), but it did complete. The game in
question is called Putt Putt: Pep's Birthday Surprise (I'm ashamed to
admit), and is by Atari from 2003.
- I then took an installation disk from something I'd just installed
on the XP machine, and put it into the Plextor drive on my 2000
machine. The CD was instantly recognized and the installation process
went fast and fine.
- Finally, I took the Putt Putt CD (the one that slowly but eventually
had installed on an XP machine) and put it into the Plextor drive on
the 2000 machine. It grunted and strained for 5-10 minutes
(guessing), and finally threw up a dialog box that said "Autorun.exe
has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to
restart the program. An error log is being created."

So the bottom lines are that the Liteon DVD drive seems to not work (I
might troubleshoot this later), the Plextor CD drive seems to be fine
with music CDs and with one program CD I put into it, but has a
problem with an Atari game that I've demonstrated does work and
install on a different computer. The Plextor drive also seems to burn
music and data CDs fine.

Since autorun.exe is a file on the CD (the Atari Putt Putt CD in this
case), is there a part of Windows 2000 that is supposed to handle
autorun.exe that is itself hosed? Again though, remember that another
software installation disk installed fine, including autorun, on this
machine and with this drive.

Also, WHERE, exactly, would I find the error log that was created when
autorun.exe generated errors?

Thanks for the help I've received so far.

As mentioned before, try rebooting into Safe Mode. This will eliminate
lots of startup programs of which maybe you have a conflict with one of
them or it just sucks. For example, Creative Labs wants to install
their CD utility that manages which program launches depending on the
formatting used and also has an option to keep the drive from spinning
down too soon (so your drive doesn't speed up, spin down, spin up again
when accessed for the next byte, spin down, and so forth). I've never
found a good use for this utility and disable it (it is an NT service
called "Creative Service for CDROM Access" - set it to Disabled and
reboot). This program performs functions already handled by Windows XP
(but I didn't bother with it under Windows 2000, either).

There may be other programs that you have installed that attempt to
modify access or behavior of the CD/DVD drives. Safe Mode boot should
eliminate most startup programs (but it won't eliminate driver problems
since those still get loaded).