DVD label in explorer

[Linea Recta]

I'm cathaloging some DVD's and for this I'm making snapshots of the contents
in explorer window.
After inserting another DVD I have to press 'renew' each time to see the new
contents, not really handy but OK.

A whole other thing is the label name! Kicking and swearing won't help,
closing and restarting explorer doesn't work either... The label keeps
displaying the name of the previous DVD. Of course I don't want to print a
cover with the wrong DVD name! How van I fix this stupid behaviour?



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I'm cathaloging some DVD's and for this I'm making snapshots of the contents
in explorer window.

There are several easier (and better) ways. Here are five ways:

1. Select all the files, press and hold the shift key, then
right-click and select Copy as path.

This copies the list of file names to the clipboard.

Paste the results into any document such as a txt or doc file & print
that.

2. Go to a command prompt and issue the command
dir [drive:folder] > c:\tempfilename (you can use any name and put it
in any folder you want)

Then open notepad, open tempfilename, and print it from there.

3. Write (for example in Notepad) a 1-line text file:
DIR %1 /O >LPT1:
Save it as "printdir.bat" in the "Send To" folder.
Then, to print list of files in any folder, right-click that folder
and select Send to | printdir.bat
To include subfolders, change the command to DIR %1 /O/S >LPT1:

4. Go to
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q321379 and
follow the instructions there.

5. Download and use any of the several freeware/shareware utilities
that can do this, such as the popular
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptdirprn.asp


And if you get a text file, you can edit and format it to your liking.

Ken

After inserting another DVD I have to press 'renew' each time to see the new
contents, not really handy but OK.

A whole other thing is the label name! Kicking and swearing won't help,
closing and restarting explorer doesn't work either... The label keeps
displaying the name of the previous DVD. Of course I don't want to print a
cover with the wrong DVD name! How van I fix this stupid behaviour?



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

I'm cathaloging some DVD's and for this I'm making snapshots of the contents
in explorer window.
After inserting another DVD I have to press 'renew' each time to see the new
contents, not really handy but OK.

A whole other thing is the label name! Kicking and swearing won't help,
closing and restarting explorer doesn't work either... The label keeps
displaying the name of the previous DVD. Of course I don't want to print a
cover with the wrong DVD name! How van I fix this stupid behaviour?

I suspect that those DVD's are home made, and someone was not
careful, and the LABEL name is the same on all of them. Correct?
Try burning a new one with a new label name and see.
Or, take a few to a new computer and see.

 

[Linea Recta]

I suspect that those DVD's are home made,
Yes.

and someone was not
careful, and the LABEL name is the same on all of them. Correct?

Wrong. They all have a name with a unique number.

Try burning a new one with a new label name and see.
Or, take a few to a new computer and see.

--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Linea Recta]

I'm cathaloging some DVD's and for this I'm making snapshots of the
contents
in explorer window.

There are several easier (and better) ways. Here are five ways:

1. Select all the files, press and hold the shift key, then
right-click and select Copy as path.

This copies the list of file names to the clipboard.

Paste the results into any document such as a txt or doc file & print
that.

2. Go to a command prompt and issue the command
dir [drive:folder] > c:\tempfilename (you can use any name and put it
in any folder you want)

Then open notepad, open tempfilename, and print it from there.

3. Write (for example in Notepad) a 1-line text file:
DIR %1 /O >LPT1:
Save it as "printdir.bat" in the "Send To" folder.
Then, to print list of files in any folder, right-click that folder
and select Send to | printdir.bat
To include subfolders, change the command to DIR %1 /O/S >LPT1:

4. Go to
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q321379 and
follow the instructions there.

5. Download and use any of the several freeware/shareware utilities
that can do this, such as the popular
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptdirprn.asp


And if you get a text file, you can edit and format it to your liking.

Ken

Thanks for all the alternatives. I will check it out asap. I hope though,
one is able to remember the ever growing list of workarounds and
alternatives e.g. in case some day it may be necessary to reinstall Windows.

Besides all that, is it a known bug that the mentioned label name of
removables are not updated correctly?




--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[Paul in Houston TX]

Wrong. They all have a name with a unique number.

Hmmm... are they over 32 characters?

 

[VanguardLH]

I'm cathaloging some DVD's and for this I'm making snapshots of the contents
in explorer window.
After inserting another DVD I have to press 'renew' each time to see the new
contents, not really handy but OK.

A whole other thing is the label name! Kicking and swearing won't help,
closing and restarting explorer doesn't work either... The label keeps
displaying the name of the previous DVD. Of course I don't want to print a
cover with the wrong DVD name! How van I fix this stupid behaviour?

Media change detection may not be working for you. Sometimes the drive
is broken (or deficient) and doesn't report the media change so the OS
or an application won't know about it. That means the OS or app thinks
you still have the same media in the drive. Software that takes over
the optical drives may not behave correctly. They may define a handler
for the device that tries to do its own media change detection but the
code is flawed. I've run across CD drives that stop reporting the media
change (they're broken). I've seen CD drives (old) that didn't report
the media change and relied on the OS or app to detect the change. I've
see software get installed that took over the device but failed to
detect a media change.

I see Paul addressed the issue of when the volume label is the same
amongst multiple discs but you say they are all different. Are they
different within the first 32 characters of the volume label string (as
hinted to by Paul)? That's if NTFS were used as the file system on the
removable media. If it is FAT then 11 characters is the maximum length.
Characters beyond those limits are ignored.

The Joliet file system is used for removable media, like CDs; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joliet_file_system. For that file system,
volume labels have a maximum length of 16 characters. The UDF
(Universal Disk Format) file system that uses a driver to make the
optical disc look like a big floppy has a maximum volume label length of
32 characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format). I
don't know about other file systems that may be used for removable media
(but then you could search on them as well as I).

Those are the limits of those file systems. Your burning software may
have different limits. It may allow use of labels that are too long but
the file system on the media which the OS supports does not so the label
will get truncated. The burning software may allow only shorter labels
than what the file system supports. That means your unique ID at the
end of the label string gets truncated by the burning software. For
example, for DVDs, I've read where other users have noted that the UDF
driver for Nero (inCD) limits the volume label to 16 characters while
other tools (e.g., ImgBurn) will allow up to the full 32 characters for
the UDF file system.

I you are keeping the volume labels shorter than the maximum length
supported by the file system (and your burning software) to ensure you
do get unique labels that are supported within the max length then I'd
be looking a problems with "media change detection" for your optical
drives. Refreshing to get a new list of current contents (for the new
disc you inserted) does not force a media change detect event. As
mentioned, software that takes over the device can had this effect. I
remember a user that had to uninstall BlindWrite (often used to make
copies of copy-protected games) to get media change detection to work
again on the CD drive. Another user had to get rid of AnyDVD
(http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html) to regain control/access to the
device by other software (OS and apps). Start looking at ALL software
you installed that is used with your optical devices.

 

[Linea Recta]

Media change detection may not be working for you. Sometimes the drive
is broken (or deficient) and doesn't report the media change so the OS
or an application won't know about it. That means the OS or app thinks
you still have the same media in the drive. Software that takes over
the optical drives may not behave correctly. They may define a handler
for the device that tries to do its own media change detection but the
code is flawed. I've run across CD drives that stop reporting the media
change (they're broken). I've seen CD drives (old) that didn't report
the media change and relied on the OS or app to detect the change. I've
see software get installed that took over the device but failed to
detect a media change.

I see Paul addressed the issue of when the volume label is the same
amongst multiple discs but you say they are all different. Are they
different within the first 32 characters of the volume label string (as
hinted to by Paul)? That's if NTFS were used as the file system on the
removable media. If it is FAT then 11 characters is the maximum length.
Characters beyond those limits are ignored.

Yes it is well under 32 characters, to be precise I count 12 characters. Now
I was talking about DVD's and I don't believe the formattingof DVD's is
NTFS? All hard drives on my computers are NTFS formatted though.

I use Nero 6.something to burn DVD-ROM ISO, no multisession.

Today, after booting the PC I inserted one of the DVD's I was talking about
yesterday. I get all the folders displayed in explorer, but... the label
(still) says: "DVD-station (E" instead of the proper label name.

I do remember fighting a battle to disactivate all autostart options of
removable media in the past. I hope this has nothing to do with the issue?

The Joliet file system is used for removable media, like CDs; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joliet_file_system. For that file system,
volume labels have a maximum length of 16 characters. The UDF
(Universal Disk Format) file system that uses a driver to make the
optical disc look like a big floppy has a maximum volume label length of
32 characters (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format). I
don't know about other file systems that may be used for removable media
(but then you could search on them as well as I).

Those are the limits of those file systems. Your burning software may
have different limits. It may allow use of labels that are too long but
the file system on the media which the OS supports does not so the label
will get truncated.

Nothing got truncated. It just kept displaying the (complete) label of the
previous media.

The burning software may allow only shorter labels
than what the file system supports. That means your unique ID at the
end of the label string gets truncated by the burning software. For
example, for DVDs, I've read where other users have noted that the UDF
driver for Nero (inCD) limits the volume label to 16 characters while
other tools (e.g., ImgBurn) will allow up to the full 32 characters for
the UDF file system.

I stopped using InCD a long time ago because it proved very unreliable...

I you are keeping the volume labels shorter than the maximum length
supported by the file system (and your burning software) to ensure you
do get unique labels that are supported within the max length then I'd
be looking a problems with "media change detection" for your optical
drives. Refreshing to get a new list of current contents (for the new
disc you inserted) does not force a media change detect event. As
mentioned, software that takes over the device can had this effect. I
remember a user that had to uninstall BlindWrite (often used to make
copies of copy-protected games) to get media change detection to work
again on the CD drive. Another user had to get rid of AnyDVD
(http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html) to regain control/access to the
device by other software (OS and apps). Start looking at ALL software
you installed that is used with your optical devices.

Apart from Windows XPSP3 itself I have Nero and Deamon Tools lite. And
perhaps even more progs. as I noticed that many software makers seem to
include their own burning acces nowadays...


--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[VanguardLH]

Yes it is well under 32 characters, to be precise I count 12 characters. Now
I was talking about DVD's and I don't believe the formattingof DVD's is
NTFS? All hard drives on my computers are NTFS formatted though.

Data disc.
UDF disc.
DVD-video disc.
Depends on what you format the disc.

Apart from Windows XPSP3 itself I have Nero and Deamon Tools lite. And
perhaps even more progs. as I noticed that many software makers seem to
include their own burning acces nowadays...

Daemon-Tools (DT) is game cheating software (to attempt to unprotect the
protected disc). That's its primary use. Some software (games)
explicitly look for this type of software and why DT tries to hide its
pretend-SCSI "SPTD" driver along with the device through this driver
(but this hide maneuver often fails); see:

http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads/faq

You'll find when you uninstall Daemon-Tools that the driver is left
behind. The SPTD driver is not listed as a separate entry in Add/Remove
Programs. You have to go to the SPTD author's site to get their removal
program to get rid of SPTD after uninstalling DT.

http://www.duplexsecure.com/downloads/
http://nx9420.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-to-remove-sptd-after-removing.html

You have to run their installer to get at its "Uninstall" function.
Their FAQ (mentioned above) describes this procedure, too.

If you want to resume proper behavior of the device, you need to get rid
of all the junk that you installed that sits between it and the OS. Get
back to a basic setup for device support. I'm sure the users of
BlindWrite also thought that product certainly wasn't interferring with
media change detection - until they uninstalled and discovered normal
behavior resumed.

 

[Char Jackson]

Daemon-Tools (DT) is game cheating software (to attempt to unprotect the
protected disc). That's its primary use.

Are you sure about that? That's the first I've heard of such a thing.
In what way does it attempt to unprotect a protected disc? (It has no
such capability.) Perhaps you're thinking of AnyDVD or the like.

What Daemon Tools Lite is *really* used for:
<http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite>

 

[Linea Recta]

Data disc.
UDF disc.
DVD-video disc.
Depends on what you format the disc.


Daemon-Tools (DT) is game cheating software (to attempt to unprotect the
protected disc). That's its primary use. Some software (games)
explicitly look for this type of software and why DT tries to hide its
pretend-SCSI "SPTD" driver along with the device through this driver

I just use it to mount unsupported CD/DVD image formats.



--
regards,

|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os

 

[VanguardLH]

Are you sure about that? That's the first I've heard of such a thing.
In what way does it attempt to unprotect a protected disc? (It has no
such capability.) Perhaps you're thinking of AnyDVD or the like.

What Daemon Tools Lite is *really* used for:
<http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/products/dtLite>

"optical media emulation"
That's its description. Why would you need an emulation layer between
the real device and the application trying to access that device? Yes,
it does provide drive emulation, like MagicDisc, VirtualCD, or Virtual
CloneDrive, but it uses its SPTD driver to hide characteristics of real
drives. The SPTD driver is not a requirement of emulating an optical
drive. It has a different use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI_Pass-Through_Direct

It was (maybe still is) included with the Alcohol 120% product. At some
point (I haven't bothered with DT for a long time due to crashes caused
by it), it looks like their installer now defaults to NOT including the
SPTD driver (you'll find it listed as SPTD<randn> where <randn> was a
random 4-digit number in trying to hide it from software detection by a
specified driver name). That wasn't true in the past. So obviously
SPTD is *not* required for DT to function as a drive emulator. So what
was/is its purpose? SPTD was a system driver for direct access to
optical devices. You don't need that for just a drive emulator. SPTD
was needed for the subversive intent of the product: unprotecting what
was protected. It would try to hide or mask out the tricks used by a
few copy protection schemes.

In the past, in the right-click context menu for DT's tray icon, it had
several options to thwart copy protection on discs. I only remember the
SecuROM context menu entry for when you wanted to enable that copy-
protection voidance method. You don't need that if your purpose is to
load legit and unprotected ISO images of discs.

After installing Daemon-Tools with SPTD included, load the DT program.
Click on the gear icon to get at Preferences. Click on the Advanced
button in the left pane. See those protection schemes that SPTD is used
to try to thwart (RPMS, SafeDisc, SecuROM, LaserLock)? Where are those
copy protection schemes most employed? For games, that's where. The
idea was that you could use an emulated copy of the game's disc so you
didn't have to keep inserting the disc into the real optical drive, and
DT would try to thwart the copy protection scheme so the game couldn't
find or got lied to that the real disc was in the real drive. I don't
know how effective was DT's copy-protection hiding since the games I've
played detected it wasn't a real optical drive, saw it was an emulated
drive, and refused to load.

With SPTD included in the installation, you have to reboot your host so
the new system driver gets used. If you omit SPTD from the installation
of Daemon-Tools then no reboot is needed. When you omit the SPTD
driver, the Advanced config settings still show the voidance methods for
various copy-protection schemes but they are all dimmed (disabled).
Without the SPTD driver to lie about the characteristics of the drive,
DT cannot offer to thwart the copy protection.

Back when DT was in its hayday, its users weren't really trying to lie
about why they were using this program. They knew why they had it
installed. At that time, there were few drive emulators that worked
well and that's why I got it. I just left my game discs in the optical
drives (I'd add as many as I wanted for how many discs I wanted to leave
mounted, or use a CD changer drive) rather than try to use a
unprotection scheme that didn't work very well (for me, that is). I was
using it before they tacked on the "Lite" moniker. Alas, it crashed too
often or even hung my host so I went to something else (e.g., Virtual
CloneDrive, MagicDisc). Eventually I just gave up on all of them since
they all seem flaky and instead I just keep a CD wallet in my desk's top
drawer for the discs I need most often.

If the OP included SPTD in the install of Daemon-Tools, and because this
system driver intercedes access to the optical drive, and because the OP
is reporting abnormal with that optical drive, you don't think it would
be appropriate to get rid of it (by uninstalling BOTH Daemon-Tools and
then following with the separate removal of SPTD) to make sure it wasn't
altering the behavior of the device? The SPTD driver requires a
separate removal since it won't uninstall when using DT's uninstaller.

 

[VanguardLH]

VanguardLH ...


I just use it to mount unsupported CD/DVD image formats.

So why not uninstall Daemon-Tools *AND* the SPTD driver (which has to
be done separately since uninstall DT won't uninstall SPTD), reboot,
and test if behavior is back to normal. Whether or not behavior
returns to normal doesn't preclude you from re-installing DT and SPTD
afterward.

Often diagnosis means having to move something out of the way even if
only temporarily. Then decide later if you still want that something
back on your host even if you find it's the cause of the problem but you
still want the features in the program causing the problem. Sometimes
the wanted features outweigh the undesirable side effects.

 

[Char Jackson]

"optical media emulation"
That's its description. Why would you need an emulation layer between
the real device and the application trying to access that device?

I think you misunderstand what DT Lite is all about. It has almost
nothing to do with "an emulation layer between the real device and the
application trying to access that device". It's not an emulation
layer; it's instead drive emulation itself. That is, it emulates the
optical drive.

As to why that would be desirable, I'm sure there are many reasons,
but I don't think dealing with disk protections is among them.

Here's how I use it. I normally configure it to emulate one optical
drive and at that point I can double-click (or right click) on a
supported disc image and have it load to the emulated drive. I don't
need to shuffle optical media and I don't need to endure the lengthy
wait for AutoInsert Notification to spin up the drive and read the
media. In effect, the emulated drive is much faster and easier to work
with. When I'm working with multiple disc images, I sometimes enable
2-4 (or more) emulated drives so that I can have multiple disc images
loaded at a time, allowing me to instantly switch among them. Doing
that with physical drives would be impractical.

In the past, in the right-click context menu for DT's tray icon, it had
several options to thwart copy protection on discs. I only remember the
SecuROM context menu entry for when you wanted to enable that copy-
protection voidance method. You don't need that if your purpose is to
load legit and unprotected ISO images of discs.

I haven't ever seen the things you described.

After installing Daemon-Tools with SPTD included, load the DT program.
Click on the gear icon to get at Preferences. Click on the Advanced
button in the left pane. See those protection schemes that SPTD is used
to try to thwart (RPMS, SafeDisc, SecuROM, LaserLock)? Where are those
copy protection schemes most employed? For games, that's where.

I don't see any of that and have never seen those things in the years
that I've been using the program. Are we still talking about DT Lite,
or perhaps one of the more advanced (non-Lite?) versions of DT?

I was
using it before they tacked on the "Lite" moniker. Alas, it crashed too
often or even hung my host so I went to something else (e.g., Virtual
CloneDrive, MagicDisc).

I've had VCD installed on another PC here for quite a few years. For
me, one thing the two programs have in common is that neither has ever
crashed or behaved erratically. They both seem to be rock solid, and
they get a lot of use here.