Trouble Starting Audio CDs

[Bruce]

Hi,

I don't know if this is a hardware of software problem.

Machine is a Dell Dimension 4550, XPHome, SP2, fully patched, WMP10. It
has two optical drives, a Hitachi DVD Rom and a Plextor 712a DVD +/-RW.
Both are set to autoplay, and let me choose what program I want to use
when I insert a CD or DVD. Both have been working fine, until...

The DVD+/-RW all of a sudden won't work correctly when I insert an audio
CD. It should ask me what I want to use to listen to the CD, but what
happens is this:

I insert an audio CD. I see the cursor change to a CD icon and blink
about three times. Then the cursor just turns back to an arrow. I can
wait for about 30 seconds, and I'll hear the drive spin up, and then
stop, spin up again, then stop. This will continue, but nothing else
happens. If I go to Windows explorer, and navigate to the drive, I can
see the list of tracks (.cda). If I click on a track WMP will sometimes
launch and play the track, and sometimes it launches, but then locks (not
responding per task manager).

If I put a DVD into the DVD +/- RW, it doesn't ask me what application I
want to use (but it's supposed to), but it launches WMP and plays the
DVD.

In summary, even though I have both drives set to prompt me what
application to play CDs or DVDs, only the DVD-Rom behaves nicely. The
DVD+/-RW never asks me what application to use when I insert a CD or DVD.
It only ocassionally launches WMP for CDs, but sometimes then stops
responding before it play a single song (although the songs appear in the
playlist, and the tracks appear in Windows Explorer). It will spin up
and back down and up and back down. If I insert a DVD, it will not ask
me what application to use, but automatically launches WMP and plays the
DVD fine.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Bruce

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Is there a firmware update available for your drive... ?

If you turn off DMA, does that help... ?

 

[Bruce]

Is there a firmware update available for your drive... ?

If you turn off DMA, does that help... ?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

Firmware is current, and DMA or PIO make no difference.

Both optical drives on the secondar IDE are in Ultra DMA mode 2, but only
the DVD-RW has this problem.

By the way, this happens with all music playing applications, such as
iTunes, MusicMatch, and Rhapsody. This definitely points to the DVD-RW,
and not WMP.

Maybe I'll just pull the DVD-RW, reboot, shut down, and reattach the DVD-
RW. Can I accomplish the same thing by uninstalling the device through
the Device Manager?

Thanks,
Bruce

Bruce