Nero Express "hid" a DVD drive from WinXP-Pro/SP3 Explorer

[RichardOnRails]

Hi,

I had drive letters Y and Z assigned to two of my DVD drives. When
copying a DVD disk in Z: to a presumably blank disk in Y: using Nero
Express v. 9, Nero ostensibly encountered some error and halted the
copying process. This is not uncommon in my somewhat substantial
experience.

I tried to open the drives but Nero apparently had them locked
somehow, so I shut Nero down, but the problem persisted. So I
rebooted WinXP-Pro/SP3. Then I was able to open the drives, but now
Windows Explorer no longer displays the drive-letter Y.

Is there some Windows utility I could use to induce Windows Explorer
to display the errant drive-letter?

Thanks in advance,
Richard

 

[Paul]

Hi,

I had drive letters Y and Z assigned to two of my DVD drives. When
copying a DVD disk in Z: to a presumably blank disk in Y: using Nero
Express v. 9, Nero ostensibly encountered some error and halted the
copying process. This is not uncommon in my somewhat substantial
experience.

I tried to open the drives but Nero apparently had them locked
somehow, so I shut Nero down, but the problem persisted. So I
rebooted WinXP-Pro/SP3. Then I was able to open the drives, but now
Windows Explorer no longer displays the drive-letter Y.

Is there some Windows utility I could use to induce Windows Explorer
to display the errant drive-letter?

Thanks in advance,
Richard

You could try running this, to remove any "filter" drivers installed
in the optical drive stack. I don't know if this covers everything
Nero can do to a system, but it's a start. Using the fixit is
safer than roaming the registry yourself. (You can stop the
keyboard on your computer from working, if you remove the wrong
"upperfilter" using Regedit.)

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd_dvd_drive_problems/

After that is done, after a reboot, go to Device Manager, and
see if you can locate the two drives, and compare the
built-in drivers Windows is using for them.

In WinXP, you have the setupapi.log file to consult, regarding
driver installation. If some hardware has radically been tossed
around recently, a look in there might highlight the fun.
Entries are time-stamped, so you can correlate the end of the
log, with the behavior you've seen.

Paul

 

[glee]

message

Hi,

I had drive letters Y and Z assigned to two of my DVD drives. When
copying a DVD disk in Z: to a presumably blank disk in Y: using Nero
Express v. 9, Nero ostensibly encountered some error and halted the
copying process. This is not uncommon in my somewhat substantial
experience.

I tried to open the drives but Nero apparently had them locked
somehow, so I shut Nero down, but the problem persisted. So I
rebooted WinXP-Pro/SP3. Then I was able to open the drives, but now
Windows Explorer no longer displays the drive-letter Y.

Is there some Windows utility I could use to induce Windows Explorer
to display the errant drive-letter?

Click Start> Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Computer Management
OR
Click the Start button, then right-click My Computer and click "Manage"
on the menu that appears.

In Computer Management, expand "Storage" and click "Disk Management" on
the left.

Right-click your errant DVD drive, click "Change Drive Letter..." on the
menu that appears.

Change to the letter you want and click OK.
If it is already set to the right letter, change it to another, click
OK, then open it again and change it to what you want.

 

[RichardOnRails]

Richard
You know that you have to set the Jumper,
to one Master,
and one to Cable Select..
to stop errors..

Hi Paul and Hot-Text,

Thanks for your responses.

I posted my question around 1 a.m. my time (EST), shut down my machine
and bedded down for the night. Before falling asleep, I thought of a
couple of things I should have tried, like pressing F8 on booting up
and selecting "Use last good configuration" or something like that.

When I awoke minutes ago and booted, I found I had additional
approaches from you folks, which are really neat.

As luck would have it, this latest reboot also provided something
else: it restored the Y drive in Windows Explorer. So I'm going to
first save your responses under personal "Windows Fixes" directory and
then explore them to educate myself further.

So again, thanks for your wise and timely responses,
Richard

 

[RichardOnRails]

Click Start> Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Computer Management
OR
Click the Start button, then right-click My Computer and click "Manage"
on the menu that appears.

In Computer Management, expand "Storage" and click "Disk Management" on
the left.

Right-click your errant DVD drive, click "Change Drive Letter..." on the
menu that appears.

Change to the letter you want and click OK.
If it is already set to the right letter, change it to another, click
OK, then open it again and change it to what you want.

Hi Glen,

Thanks for that excellent guidance. As I posted earlier, another
reboot somehow solved my problem. I've saved this thread as a
reference should such an anomaly befall me in the future.

Best wishes,
Richard