Reading defective CDs sometimes hangs the entire Windows

  • Thread starter Thread starter Luca Villa
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Luca Villa

Sometimes while I try to read defective CDs or DVDs Windows (95,98,
NT, 2000, XP) hangs and become unresponsive, sometimes even to CTRL+ALT
+CANC, continuing to try to read the disk forever, so that I have to
reboot (loosing my unsaved data!) to regain the control of my PC.

Is there a solution to this problem? does Vista still have this
problem?
 
Luca Villa said:
Sometimes while I try to read defective CDs or DVDs Windows (95,98,
NT, 2000, XP) hangs and become unresponsive, sometimes even to
CTRL+ALT +CANC, continuing to try to read the disk forever, so that I
have to reboot (loosing my unsaved data!) to regain the control of my
PC.

Is there a solution to this problem? does Vista still have this
problem?
Click to expand...

Are you sure they are defective discs? As do they work in other drives?
As the majority of the time, this is a sign of a flaky laser and/or
drive.
 
Luca said:
Sometimes while I try to read defective CDs or DVDs Windows (95,98,
NT, 2000, XP) hangs and become unresponsive, sometimes even to CTRL+ALT
+CANC, continuing to try to read the disk forever, so that I have to
reboot (loosing my unsaved data!) to regain the control of my PC.

Is there a solution to this problem? does Vista still have this
problem?
Click to expand...

The solution is to not try and read defective disks. This is not
operating system-dependent. What *is* operating system-dependent is what
Windows often does to the data transfer method - drops it down to PIO -
when there are errors. See MVP Hans-Georg Michna's explanation and fix
for that:

http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm


Malke
 
Are you sure they are defective discs? As do they work in other drives?
As the majority of the time, this is a sign of a flaky laser and/or
drive.
Click to expand...

Also, it could be an AV app scanning a huge file on the CD/DVD which may
appear to hang Windows.
 
Are you sure they are defective discs? As do they work in other drives?
As the majority of the time, this is a sign of a flaky laser and/or
drive.
Click to expand...

I presume it because:
1: the CDs I'm trying to read are masterized 5 to 8 years ago and if
it's true that the average
life on a CD is 3 years they must be atleast very probably partially
defective
2: my drive can read some files from them, and hangs on other files
trying to read them continually (I presume from led and noise...)
3: my drive can usually read new masterized CDs without problems
 
Also, it could be an AV app scanning a huge file on the CD/DVD which may
appear to hang Windows.
Click to expand...

Can't be. I actually don't have any AV installed and they are all
video files.
 
The solution is to not try and read defective disks.

Sometimes I have important data on these disks that I want to try to
recover and sometimes I don't have near to me an electronic microscope
and a spare bionic brain to analyze the disk for defects before
inserting it in my CD reader and trying to read it ;)
This is not operating system-dependent.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I remember that in MS-DOS I always got the Abort,
Retry, Ignore when CRC errors in CD reading occurred. It never hanged
on CD reading or atleast I don't remember it.
What *is* operating system-dependent is what
Windows often does to the data transfer method - drops it down to PIO -
when there are errors.
Click to expand...

And does dropping down it to PIO normally implies that Windows hangs?
See MVP Hans-Georg Michna's explanation and fix
for that: http://www.michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm
Click to expand...

Interesting. Now I read it. Thanks!
 
See MVP Hans-Georg Michna's explanation and fix
Interesting. Now I read it. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I read it fully. Very interesting but I don't understand a thing:
isn't it sufficient to change the Transfer Mode from "PIO Only" to
"DMA if available" in Secondary IDE Channel Properties - Advanced
Settings?
 
I presume it because:
1: the CDs I'm trying to read are masterized 5 to 8 years ago and if
it's true that the average
life on a CD is 3 years they must be atleast very probably partially
defective
2: my drive can read some files from them, and hangs on other files
trying to read them continually (I presume from led and noise...)
3: my drive can usually read new masterized CDs without problems
Click to expand...

As lame as it sounds, you can often read some CDs on one computer, but
not another. I've burned CDs that would only play back on the PC that
created them. I burned others that would play back on any player
EXCEPT the one that created them. I burned CDs that wouldn't play,
after repeatedly trying, then played fine a few weeks later on the
same machine.

If all else fails two things you can try:

Try to copy the contents use the old DOS copy command from a command
prompt. I've done this with some degree of success. Usually you don't
recover everything, but enough to make the attempt worth the effort.

If the data you're trying to get is really important one of several of
the electric CD/DVD cleaner machines actually DO work... sometimes. I
picked up a Memororex OptiFix Pro for maybe $20 or so at Fry's and
while it didn't always work it worked enough to pay for itself.
 
Luca Villa said:
I presume it because:
1: the CDs I'm trying to read are masterized 5 to 8 years ago and if
it's true that the average
life on a CD is 3 years they must be atleast very probably partially
defective
2: my drive can read some files from them, and hangs on other files
trying to read them continually (I presume from led and noise...)
3: my drive can usually read new masterized CDs without problems
Click to expand...

CD-R should be just fine, CD-RW maybe questionable.
 
Bad CD or bad laser reader is not relevant to the problem.

The fact is that you don't know if a CD cannot be read from your
system before you *try it*.
And when you try it, if CD cannot be read, in some circumstances it
hangs your entire system while the CD reader continues to try to read
it (irregular LED and noises...). You press CTRL+ALT+CANC and (if
you're lucky) the task manager opens showing about 50% of your
applications as "Not Responding". You hope that these come back to
life because you have important unsaved things in them (like a
Photoshop drawing or a notepad window with an unsaved text) so you
wait some time but the Not Responding pass from 50% to 80%. You try to
remove the CD and the caddy opens. CD is removed. Yeah!! You think:
I'm lucky, now Windows resurrects. Some other seconds and 80% become
90%. You try to kill a process and BANG: task manager hangs! you try
to close it but it remains there, hanged. The mouse moves. You try
again CTRL+ALT+CANC hoping for the miracle and nothing happens. You
press CAPS LOCK, BLOCK NUM and BLOC SCORR and the keyboards leds
doesn't respond.

When you think to a solution, start from here :)

I bet you all had a similar problem in your life with Windows. The
question is: is there a way to avoid it in future? does DMA instead or
PIO really avoid that Windows hangs in these circumstances?

PS: please avoid stupid answers like "pass to Linux" or "don't try to
read defective CDs nor use defective CD readers". You know that
they're not interesting.
 
Bad CD or bad laser reader is not relevant to the problem.

The fact is that you don't know if a CD cannot be read from your
system before you *try it*.
And when you try it, if CD cannot be read, in some circumstances it
hangs your entire system while the CD reader continues to try to read
it (irregular LED and noises...). You press CTRL+ALT+CANC and (if
you're lucky) the task manager opens showing about 50% of your
applications as "Not Responding".
Click to expand...

Nothing new, Windows has always been this dumb. Apparently no
Microsoft programmer ever figured out what eject or stop means. Just
more proof while Windows is suppose to be the operating system it
never really is in full control of anything. It's the same thing when
you try to stop a "not responding" application from Task Manger. You
can wait and wait and if lucky maybe a minute or more later Windows
finally wakes up.
You hope that these come back to
life because you have important unsaved things in them (like a
Photoshop drawing or a notepad window with an unsaved text) so you
wait some time but the Not Responding pass from 50% to 80%. You try to
remove the CD and the caddy opens. CD is removed. Yeah!! You think:
I'm lucky, now Windows resurrects. Some other seconds and 80% become
90%. You try to kill a process and BANG: task manager hangs! you try
to close it but it remains there, hanged. The mouse moves. You try
again CTRL+ALT+CANC hoping for the miracle and nothing happens. You
press CAPS LOCK, BLOCK NUM and BLOC SCORR and the keyboards leds
doesn't respond.

When you think to a solution, start from here :)
Click to expand...

There isn't any I found. It is just part of "wow" of using Vista.

Wow... I can't stop something, Windows won't let me.
Wow... this is pile of junk.
Wow... I paid $200 for this kind of torture.
I bet you all had a similar problem in your life with Windows. The
question is: is there a way to avoid it in future? does DMA instead or
PIO really avoid that Windows hangs in these circumstances?

PS: please avoid stupid answers like "pass to Linux" or "don't try to
read defective CDs nor use defective CD readers". You know that
they're not interesting.
Click to expand...

Kicking around in my mind I seem to remember reading somewhere way
back that some calls to a CD/DVD player use smoke and mirrors to
read/write, which explains why everytime you update the OS, you
usually also have to update your CD/DVD burning software too because
the old "hacks" that worked in the old OS have to be revised to hack
the newer one.
 
Luca Villa said:
Sometimes while I try to read defective CDs or DVDs Windows (95,98,
NT, 2000, XP) hangs and become unresponsive, sometimes even to CTRL+ALT
+CANC, continuing to try to read the disk forever, so that I have to
reboot (loosing my unsaved data!) to regain the control of my PC.

Is there a solution to this problem? does Vista still have this
problem?
Click to expand...


Nero has a tool at CDSpeed2000.com that tests discs... cdspeed is the name
of the tool. If you hold down the left shift key when you insert a CD/DVD,
autoplay is ignored. You might try downloading cdspeed, installing it (well,
there's no install... it's just a standalone exe, so unzip it...), inserting
the CD/DVD while holding down the left shift key (longer than just when the
drive bay closes), and then run cdspeed to test the disc. I usually use the
read test to check if a disc is defective or not.

Good luck,

Lang
 
PS: please avoid stupid answers like "pass to Linux" or "don't try to
read defective CDs nor use defective CD readers". You know that
they're not interesting.
Click to expand...

actually a similar thing happens in Linux. I believe it's called a 'zombie
process' but I forget. the system blocks on some hardware device and won't
let go. I've only ever encountered it with cd drives. the process cannot
be killed.

I am not sure any PC operating system can recover itself but anyway it is
familiar on the Linux side.

Felmon
 
Lang said:
Nero has a tool at CDSpeed2000.com that tests discs... cdspeed is the name
of the tool. If you hold down the left shift key when you insert a CD/DVD,
autoplay is ignored. You might try downloading cdspeed, installing it (well,
there's no install... it's just a standalone exe, so unzip it...), inserting
the CD/DVD while holding down the left shift key (longer than just when the
drive bay closes), and then run cdspeed to test the disc. I usually use the
read test to check if a disc is defective or not.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info but there are two problems:
- I don't like to loose 20 minutes to test the entire CD/DVDs surface
with CDSpeed2000 before inserting any CD/DVDs, to prevent the problem
- I don't even know if CDSpeed2000 doesn't hangs Windows when it
encounters the same circumstances
 
Luca Villa said:
Thanks for the info but there are two problems:
- I don't like to loose 20 minutes to test the entire CD/DVDs surface
with CDSpeed2000 before inserting any CD/DVDs, to prevent the problem
- I don't even know if CDSpeed2000 doesn't hangs Windows when it
encounters the same circumstances
Click to expand...


Well... If you prefer losing x number of minutes because Vista locks up
instead of at least trying to test the media... that's your choice. It
doesn't take 20 minutes to test CD's here, but I could see it taking that
long if you're working with old media that may only be 2x.

Good luck,

Lang
 
This was posted by Wesley Vogel (MS-MVP) on 4th May under the subject
"Problem deleting or renaming files":

"Avi files have a bug in XP. XP thinks that it has to read through every
avi
file every time that you open a folder that contains any. You also get the
locked file in use when trying to delete, rename, move, etc. avi files.

See this on the fix.

How to get rid of "Locked AVI" Bug in Windows XP
http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/...w-to-get-rid-of-locked-avi-bug-in-windows-xp/

The only down side to the above fix is that when you right click an avi file
and select Properties, the Summary page will be blank or grayed out. Which
I decided was a lesser evil than some of the other problems .avi files
cause."

HTH,
ern.
 
ernie said:
This was posted by Wesley Vogel (MS-MVP) on 4th May under the subject
"Problem deleting or renaming files":

"Avi files have a bug in XP. XP thinks that it has to read through
every avi
file every time that you open a folder that contains any. You also
get the locked file in use when trying to delete, rename, move, etc.
avi files.

See this on the fix.

How to get rid of "Locked AVI" Bug in Windows XP
http://riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/...w-to-get-rid-of-locked-avi-bug-in-windows-xp/

The only down side to the above fix is that when you right click an
avi file and select Properties, the Summary page will be blank or
grayed out. Which I decided was a lesser evil than some of the other
problems .avi files cause."

HTH,
ern.

"Luca Villa" <[email protected]> wrote in message
Click to expand...

I must have been cheated out of this bug. I have a few30 .avi files
under My Documents/My Videos/AVI/xxxxxx.avi.
 
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