XP not reading CDs or flash drives

[Jack Dominey]

I'm running XP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 5100. About a year ago, I
noticed it would not read a CD or flash drive.

CDs - XP reports data CDs, music CDs, and flash drives as Total Size 0
bytes, Free Space 0 bytes. CDs show no file system. Flash drives
show a file system of RAW. The CD drive itself is recognized and
assigned drive D:, and plugging in the flash drive causes it to show
in Explorer as Removable Disk (E.

I am reasonably certain this is not a hardware problem. Music CDs run
fine in Windows Media Player (!). I can boot Ubuntu Linux from a CD,
and Ubuntu recognizes CDs and Flash Drives.

I have tried tweaking the Registry settings for removable drives with
no result.

Any advice would be welcome.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

My guess would be you upgraded to IE7, and it hit your registry Permissions
negatively.

Aaron Stebner's WebLog Solving setup errors by using the SubInACL tool to
repair file and registry permissions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

 

[Elmo]

I'm running XP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 5100. About a year ago, I
noticed it would not read a CD or flash drive.

CDs - XP reports data CDs, music CDs, and flash drives as Total Size 0
bytes, Free Space 0 bytes. CDs show no file system. Flash drives
show a file system of RAW. The CD drive itself is recognized and
assigned drive D:, and plugging in the flash drive causes it to show
in Explorer as Removable Disk (E.

I am reasonably certain this is not a hardware problem. Music CDs run
fine in Windows Media Player (!). I can boot Ubuntu Linux from a CD,
and Ubuntu recognizes CDs and Flash Drives.

I have tried tweaking the Registry settings for removable drives with
no result.

Any advice would be welcome.

CD repair for XP:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

Also try the following. You should back up the registry before making
changes:

Click Start, Run, type Regedit, click OK.
Locate this Registry Key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
Key Name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Value Data: [Delete All Value Data from UpperFilters and LowerFilters]
Note: Do not delete the Key or the Multi-String Values. Delete only the
data values.
Exit Registry and Reboot

 

[Jack Dominey]

I'm running XP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 5100. About a year ago, I
noticed it would not read a CD or flash drive.

CDs - XP reports data CDs, music CDs, and flash drives as Total Size 0
bytes, Free Space 0 bytes. CDs show no file system. Flash drives
show a file system of RAW. The CD drive itself is recognized and
assigned drive D:, and plugging in the flash drive causes it to show
in Explorer as Removable Disk (E.

I am reasonably certain this is not a hardware problem. Music CDs run
fine in Windows Media Player (!). I can boot Ubuntu Linux from a CD,
and Ubuntu recognizes CDs and Flash Drives.

I have tried tweaking the Registry settings for removable drives with
no result.

Any advice would be welcome.

CD repair for XP:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

Also try the following. You should back up the registry before making
changes:

Click Start, Run, type Regedit, click OK.
Locate this Registry Key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
Key Name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Value Data: [Delete All Value Data from UpperFilters and LowerFilters]
Note: Do not delete the Key or the Multi-String Values. Delete only the
data values.
Exit Registry and Reboot

Thanks. I tried the Registry change, but it made no difference.

It's very frustrating. Windows recognizes the drive, it just doesn't
read any data off of it. Oh, and it now sees a data disk as RAW
format.

 

[Jack Dominey]

My guess would be you upgraded to IE7, and it hit your registry Permissions
negatively.

Aaron Stebner's WebLog Solving setup errors by using the SubInACL tool to
repair file and registry permissions:
http://blogs.msdn.com/astebner/archive/2006/09/04/739820.aspx

Nope, still running IE6. And I ran the permissions fix from Aaron
Stebner. No change.

Windows recognizes the drives, it just won't read them.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

 

[brian]

this is strange in the timing. my system booted to scan disk when I started
on the 29th for an unknown reason

at first cd and dvd were not showing up
installed is cd, dvd, sandisk read/write 12 in 1 and firewire wd mybook
all plugged in and show as as letter in my comp but do not recognize. when I
click on letter it asks if I want to format.

I did the upper/lower fix and it didn't work either so I removed the cd and
then disabled the dvd. then enabled the dvd and they both were recognized
after found new hardware.

I tried reg mechanic, restore point and even dell support chat (they
repeated all my efforts) after they tried restore I disconnected

I'm running XP Home SP2 on a Dell Inspiron 5100. About a year ago, I
noticed it would not read a CD or flash drive.

CDs - XP reports data CDs, music CDs, and flash drives as Total Size 0
bytes, Free Space 0 bytes. CDs show no file system. Flash drives
show a file system of RAW. The CD drive itself is recognized and
assigned drive D:, and plugging in the flash drive causes it to show
in Explorer as Removable Disk (E.

I am reasonably certain this is not a hardware problem. Music CDs run
fine in Windows Media Player (!). I can boot Ubuntu Linux from a CD,
and Ubuntu recognizes CDs and Flash Drives.

I have tried tweaking the Registry settings for removable drives with
no result.

Any advice would be welcome.

CD repair for XP:
http://aumha.org/downloads/cdgone.zip

Also try the following. You should back up the registry before making
changes:

Click Start, Run, type Regedit, click OK.
Locate this Registry Key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
Key Name: {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
Value Data: [Delete All Value Data from UpperFilters and LowerFilters]
Note: Do not delete the Key or the Multi-String Values. Delete only the
data values.
Exit Registry and Reboot

Thanks. I tried the Registry change, but it made no difference.

It's very frustrating. Windows recognizes the drive, it just doesn't
read any data off of it. Oh, and it now sees a data disk as RAW
format.
--
"I'm gonna act grown up/That's my plan"
Jack Dominey
jack_dominey (at) email (dot) com
R.I.P. Bob Denver