why does windows "freeze" pause when you insert a cd/dvd?

[Joshua Wood]

Basically as my topic states, why does the system seem to pause when I
insert a cd or dvd? To some extent it buffers my actions. It's like
the whole system is temporarilly on pause until windows has finished
examining the cd/dvd.

Autoplay is turned off, and I'm using xp pro. DMA is on for my cd/dvd
drives, and both are on the 2nd channel correctly setup. Other
machines/windows verions do it also.

I don't really see any need for this, any way to fix it?

Thanks,
Josh

 

[kurttrail]

Basically as my topic states, why does the system seem to pause when I
insert a cd or dvd? To some extent it buffers my actions. It's like
the whole system is temporarilly on pause until windows has finished
examining the cd/dvd.

Autoplay is turned off, and I'm using xp pro. DMA is on for my cd/dvd
drives, and both are on the 2nd channel correctly setup. Other
machines/windows verions do it also.

I don't really see any need for this, any way to fix it?

Stop inserting CDs when you don't want Windows to pause to read it.

--
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microscum.pubic.windowsexp.gonorrhea
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"Produkt-Aktivierung macht frei"

 

[Richard Urban]

If Windows did not pause to examine the CD/DVD you inserted, the operating
system would not know how to handle the disk. You wouldn't want to overwrite
what is already there, right. If the system didn't note the inventory of
what is already on the disk, that could happen. The system "has" to know
what it is working with, what type of disk has been installed, where the
present information is located, where the free space is positioned etc.

If you have a bad file on the CD it will greatly lengthen the review time,
or may stall the system completely. This happened to my brother when he
burned a questionable .mp3 file (yes, from Kazaa) onto a CD that already had
about 60 songs on it. The CD became unusable and would freeze his system
every time he put the CD in the tray. I told him exactly what the problem
was, but it took him about 3 weeks before he finally listened to me. He
burned a new CD, without the song in question, and continued to add
additional songs till the disk was filled. He had no further problems.


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Richard Urban]

Isn't it great that computer are smarter than many of the people who try to
use them?

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Grim Reaper]

I've been saying for years that people should be made to take a computer
test before they're allowed to drive a PC....
________________________________________
The Grim Reaper

 

[Joshua Wood]

So it's a fundamental design flaw with windows then, that hasn't been
changed over the last 10 years and we can assume it will never change?
Linux doesn't do this. I'm not pro or conning any particular OS, was
just wanting to understand why Windows needed to do it. If there is no
way around it, that's fine. I can live with it, I don't use cds that
often anyways.

 

[Richard Urban]

It is NOT a flaw. Your thinking is flawed!

It is just the way the operating system, ANY operating system, works. Hard
drives do it also. It's just that hard drives are about a hundred times
faster than the fastest CD drive. You don't notice it.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[RW]

It most definitely is a flaw. Why should my hyper threaded 3.2ghz wizz
bang computer come to a screeching halt just to read a cd header? It's
just poor programming, pure and simple.

-----------------------------------------------------




It is NOT a flaw. Your thinking is flawed!

It is just the way the operating system, ANY operating system, works.
Hard
drives do it also. It's just that hard drives are about a hundred
times
faster than the fastest CD drive. You don't notice it.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Plato]

So it's a fundamental design flaw with windows then, that hasn't been
changed over the last 10 years and we can assume it will never change?
Linux doesn't do this. I'm not pro or conning any particular OS, was

Different types of OS's are designed for different types of customers.

 

[Bob I]

Is "Autoplay" enabled?

 

[ms]

Not related to autoplay. It just seems to be the way windows works, maybe a
linux user could post experiences.

Hard drives are much faster, not to mention the variations between CD/DVD
media.

 

[pjp]

I "suspect" the "hang" is related to an interrupt of some sort (ring 0 bios
call or similar???) waiting on the firmware in the drive to fill the data
buffer and report back it's success/failure code. Seems a lot of the time
Windows will hang on just about any hardware if it's slow enough or
"broken", e.g. unresponsive nic, modem, floppies, etc.

I find it more a pain in the butt when the cd turns out to be unreadable and
the drive takes it's time responding to the eject button.

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 09:56:27 GMT, "pjp"

I "suspect" the "hang" is related to an interrupt of some sort (ring 0 bios
call or similar???) waiting on the firmware in the drive to fill the data
buffer and report back it's success/failure code. Seems a lot of the time
Windows will hang on just about any hardware if it's slow enough or
"broken", e.g. unresponsive nic, modem, floppies, etc.

I find it more a pain in the butt when the cd turns out to be unreadable and
the drive takes it's time responding to the eject button.

Yup - DOS seems to take these things in its stride, while Windows
tends to fall on its ass.

If the OS can regain control, then it needs to sanity-check how long
things take, and break cleanly when they fail. But if the OS can't
regain control, then you are screwed.

The OS can't regain control if the device's driver disables
intrerrupts without applying its own time-out protection, or if the
hardware it calls does not return from the call.

The latter's unlikely to be an issue unless the hardware disables the
CPU at the hardware level; something that AFAIK is not possible within
the Intel x86 architecture.

What's more likely to go wrong, are three things:

1) Dumb-ass drivers that disable interrupts and then wait forever for
an expected IO port event or result

2) Dumb-ass drivers that retry the failed attempt, being unaware that
underlying code and firmware may also be retrying the attempt, so the
result is an exponential number of retries that beat the hardware to
death (this is amplified with HDs where doomed attempts to hide
defects via sector remapping are made)

3) Dumb-ass app or OS code that doesn't check for error results of
disk operations, and just blunders on as if everything worked

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