Removable Drives not working

[Len]

Hi All,
Dont know how its happened but I cannot access any removable drives, DVD
Drive or USB cards.
The DVD drive has a round circle through it and USB cards will not open.
I've tried to finfd group policys but it reports non are available as I
thought this may be the answer.
I'm lost for any other iteas on how to put right or what cased them to be
blocked so and help would be great.
Len

 

[Michael Solomon]

Hi All,
Dont know how its happened but I cannot access any removable drives,
DVD Drive or USB cards.
The DVD drive has a round circle through it and USB cards will not
open. I've tried to finfd group policys but it reports non are
available as I thought this may be the answer.
I'm lost for any other iteas on how to put right or what cased them
to be blocked so and help would be great.
Len

Unless these drives required special softwqre as opposed to simply being
recognized by the OS, you might try removing them in Device Manager, then,
reboot and let the system refind and reinstall the drives.

 

[Len]

Michael,
Thanks for that sugestion but I've tried that and still end up with the same
result.

I have found I can write to the CD drive but I just cannot read from it or
any USB card drives I attach?

Len

 

[Don]

Michael,
Thanks for that sugestion but I've tried that and still end up with the
same result.

I have found I can write to the CD drive but I just cannot read from it
or any USB card drives I attach?

We've had reports of some pretty strange bugs caused by installing
programs which are not Vista compatible. Have you installed anything
recently which normally needs to write to such devices?

 

[Len]

Don,
No nothing installed.
I've even tried rolling back Vista to early restore points with no change.
If it was just CD/ DVD drive then I would say drive faulty but then why the
same with USB cards?
And to check I've now rebooted into safe mode and there is then no red
circle in drive and I can read CD in drive.
Getting frustrating!
Len

 

[Michael Solomon]

Don,
No nothing installed.
I've even tried rolling back Vista to early restore points with no change.
If it was just CD/ DVD drive then I would say drive faulty but then why
the same with USB cards?
And to check I've now rebooted into safe mode and there is then no red
circle in drive and I can read CD in drive.
Getting frustrating!
Len

Len, have a look at the following KB article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060

While it doesn't reference, Vista, others who have had similar problems have
successfully used the manual procedure mentioned in the article to gain
access to their CD/DVD drives in Vista. Sometimes, these things work
similar to a chain, one item, pulls down others. Maybe, if you can regain
access to the DVD drive with this procedure, everything else will fall into
place.

NOTE: it does require a regedit.

 

[Don]

Don,
No nothing installed.
I've even tried rolling back Vista to early restore points with no change.
If it was just CD/ DVD drive then I would say drive faulty but then why
the same with USB cards?
And to check I've now rebooted into safe mode and there is then no red
circle in drive and I can read CD in drive...

Well, that info is certainly important, although I'm not expert enough
to suggest a fix. Safe mode usually implies that only the very basic
(generic) drivers are used instead of fancier proprietary ones.

Can you use Device Manager in both modes to compare the drivers that
Vista is using for the CD drive? (You didn't say if the USB problem
persists in Safe Mode.)