Error Message - Drive Not Supporting Digital Playback

[Guest]

"I have been getting the folloiwng message "The drive has not been shown to
support digital audio playback" in the systems option of the event viewer -
the source says "redbook". When I read the Microsoft explanation it said
that the optical drive should be replaced. How do y ou know what drive they
are taling about - I have a CD-RW drive and a DVD drive.

I called the PC manufacturer and they told me that as long as either drive
plays a CD nothing is wrong with it. What does this message mean and what
should I do. I am using Roxio Easy CD Creator software.

Thanks

 

[Nightowl]

Snip wrote on Fri, 29 Jul 2005:

"I have been getting the folloiwng message "The drive has not been shown to
support digital audio playback" in the systems option of the event viewer -
the source says "redbook". When I read the Microsoft explanation it said
that the optical drive should be replaced. How do y ou know what drive they
are taling about - I have a CD-RW drive and a DVD drive.

I called the PC manufacturer and they told me that as long as either drive
plays a CD nothing is wrong with it. What does this message mean and what
should I do. I am using Roxio Easy CD Creator software.

Thanks

Hi Snip

The message is from redbook.sys and refers to your CD drive. Don't
worry, there isn't anything wrong with it and it doesn't need replacing!

The *standard* answer is that the drive is set to use digital audio and
redbook doesn't think it can support that mode. To stop the alert you
can right-click on My Computer, choose Properties, Hardware tab, Device
Manager. Right-click on your CD drive, choose Properties, then the
Properties tab, uncheck Enable digital audio for this device and OK your
way out.

BUT -- I believe the redbook message is often false, and if your drive
does in fact support digital audio and you switch it off, you will get
inferior sound quality.

If you search on Google using the words of the alert, you will find many
people saying that they suddenly started to get this message after doing
a repair install or upgrade of XP, though they hadn't changed their
hardware. This happened to me after upgrading to SP2, although my drive
is the same one I've had for the last three years. A friend who has the
latest, shiniest and most expensive drive that most definitely does
support digital audio has also suddenly started getting redbook alerts.

So my personal advice would be to just ignore the messages in your log.
You won't cause any harm to your system by doing so and the redbook
entry can actually be useful as a marker of startups and reboots

One possible thing to try: yesterday I flashed the firmware of my CD-RW
drive and this caused Windows to re-detect it as new hardware. Today the
redbook alert is gone, just as suddenly as it started. . .

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the information - How do I know which drive needs an update - the
writer drive or the reader drive? I don't know where to look for my writer
though - it says in the device manager that it is a "HL-DT-ST CR-RW
GCE-8483B". Who makes this drive?

Thanks

 

[Nightowl]

Snip wrote on Sat, 30 Jul 2005:

Thanks for the information - How do I know which drive needs an update - the
writer drive or the reader drive? I don't know where to look for my writer
though - it says in the device manager that it is a "HL-DT-ST CR-RW
GCE-8483B". Who makes this drive?

Hi Snip

Your writer and reader are the same drive -- a CD-RW drive. It took some
tracking down on Google but it seems your drive is made by
LG/HLDS/Goldstar.

I wasn't suggesting, though, that you update the firmware unless you're
having serious problems -- if you don't do it right you can end up
trashing your drive. What I meant was it might be an idea to uninstall
the drive from Device Manager, reboot and let Windows detect it as new
hardware, to see if that clears the redbook alerts, as it did for me.
Sorry for not being clearer.

If that doesn't work, I'd say just ignore the messages and don't worry
about them; they are just informational and don't mean anything is wrong
with your system.

 

[Guest]

I uninstalled both CD drives and then rebooted - the redbook errors went away
- at least for now. Sure glad it was that easy. I went to lge.com to check
out the writer and as far as I can see it doesn't exist in their database. I
wonder if these types of OEM units go by a different name on the retail side?

 

[Nightowl]

Snip wrote on Sun, 31 Jul 2005:

I uninstalled both CD drives and then rebooted - the redbook errors went away
- at least for now. Sure glad it was that easy. I went to lge.com to check
out the writer and as far as I can see it doesn't exist in their database. I
wonder if these types of OEM units go by a different name on the retail side?

Hey Snip

I'm really glad that worked for you too.

I did a big Google search for your drive, and most mentions of a
manufacturer were for LG, though I also saw it called Hitachi. I didn't
find it on either company's site, but found it at The Firmware Page
http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?download_id=1877
where it was called LG/HLDS/Goldstar. (Again, I'm not suggesting you
flash your drive -- that was just for information.)

My CD-RW drive is an old Lite-On 24102M and that doesn't appear on their
site either, only the 24102B, though again I found it at The Firmware
Page. I think it was probably a variant they made especially for Dell
and that's why they don't mention it on their site. Perhaps there's a
similar reason for your drive not being mentioned?