Robert said:
Sometime this summer I realized that when I put a CD in the internal CD drive
it locked up Windows so I had to restart. However, once I restarted with the
CD in the drive Windows Explorer recognized it and applications could use it.
I must have loaded some software that conflicts with the auto recognition
feature of Windows Explorer. If I upgraded to Windows XP would the problem go
away?
That's a question that probably won't get an answer until you try...
Maybe it's a better idea to try and find out what is causing the lockup.
Not that it will be easy, because such explorer plugins usually run in
the process context of explorer.exe, and not as separate programs, so
task manager won't reveal them.
The first thing I would try is hold down the shift key while inserting a
CD: if the system still locks up, it's not an explorer plugin that
caused it.
If it still locks up: device manager, remove (uninstall) the CD-ROM
drive, reboot and let the system re-discover it and reinstall the
drivers. /Maybe/ it will help.
If it didn't lock up now, start searching in the direction of audio &
DVD player software, CD recording soft, and all kinds of explorer
"enhancements".
Unless you're _really_ good at home in the registry, especially HKCR and
its classes/clsid subkeys, nothing short of uninstalling will help
disable most of those.
Myself, for HKCR, I would think twice before venturing into *that* mess.
Those {GUID-shaped-long-unreadable-key-name} links are the easiest part
of the woods to get lost in. Not meant for human consumption.
If you're very lucky, RegClean might find something broken there and fix
it for you, at least that's what it was made for...
The bad news:
http://www.jsiinc.com/SUBA/tip0100/rh0139.htm , and I
wouldn't trust a version downloaded from anywhere else.
