Help w/ FAQ guide: registry items for CD-ROM not recognized

Hello all! :wave

I've been having an issue with my CD & DVD-ROMs not working for nearly two years now. My husband an I (both amateurs at this) have tried multiple times to fix this problem. It's been so long since the problem started, I can't say for sure what happened or what exactly we've tried so far. I do know that we were using DVD shrink and Nero... maybe another program as well around the time that the problem started.

Anyway, over the last few years my husband and I have both been successful in getting at least one CD-ROM working at a simple read only capacity, but only for a very short time in both cases. But.. it always ends up disappearing from My Computer again.

I read the thread by Adrynalyne in FAQs titled: "How to fix missing DVD/CD drives not showing up in windows explorer"
I was going to try the suggestion:

My registry has this key but it also has directly under it 11 VERY SIMILAR keys. In the first part ;

the 65 changes to higher numbers in the next 11 keys, but everything else is EXACTLY the same.

Before removing the values for UpperFilters and LowerFilters in the suggested key, I was wondering if maybe during the last couple of years of trying to fix the problem with our CD/DVD drives, we have created additional keys that might need attention as well.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

 

CD-RW drive is now showing up in My Computer, but...

When I put a new music CD in, sometimes the mouse gets the little spinning disk for a few seconds and then nothing. If I click on CD-RW drive in My Computer, and window pops up that says, "Please insert disk".....

Other times, I put the disk in, it recognized it and then sort of plays it. I say, "sort of" because Windows Media opens, shows the album cover, lists the songs on the CD, and then can only play part of some of the songs before getting a little red x next to the song title.

Some Backround:
I'm using Windows XP home edition on a Sony Viao PC. The computer originally came with a CD-RW and a DVD-ROM. My husband replaced the original DVD-ROM with a Sony DVD-R/RW and everything worked find for quite some time. At some point a few years back we started having trouble with the DVD-R/RW and eventually it disappeared from My Computer. My husband worked on the problem for quite awhile and was able to get it working intermittently before losing it again. Eventually we removed the DVD-R/RW from the tower and used only the CD-RW.

I'm not sure how long we had use of just the CD-RW but eventually that one stopped working as well. At one point, my husband tried replacing it with a CD-ROM drive his uncle had given him but it was glitchy (to old maybe) and he eventually gave up.

About six months ago I decided to take on the task of getting the original CD-RW to work because I desperately needed to backup my documents. rolleyes

I went through Sony Viao's Wizards, opened the tower, rearranged the connections, followed several random online suggestions, and eventually got the CD-RW working. But it was short lived. It would play music CDs and most software CDs but I could never get it to burn a CD and I was never able to back up My Documents. Then the read properties got glitchy again and it disappeared from My Computer.

Sometimes it shows up in My Computer randomly but doesn't recognize the disk. Other times it recognizes the disk but has trouble playing it. So that's were I'm at now.

Ideally, I would like to get both the CD-RW and the DVD-R/RW to be working completely. I'm not sure if that is possible, but I definitely want to try.

I now have a 1G USB stick that I was able to save My Documents and pictures onto, but there is not enough room left to put all my husbands pics and music on it too.

My CD-RW is a TEAC CD-W524E
My DVD-R/RW model # is DRU-720A (not sure what it would be called in properties because it's not currently in the computer tower).

Any suggestions?

 

Start simple, have you tried running a dvd cleaning disk in the drive to clean the lens? Have you ever installed one or more codec packs onto the machine, and if so are they in the add/remove programs list so you can remove them? (somtimes codec conflicts can cause hardware problems). Have you tried replacing the IDE ribbon? Its cheaper than a new drive, and a bad ribbon is really hard to diagnose unless you have a bunch of spares around. And also ribbon connector ends can be cleaned of oxidation by simply plugging them on and off several times at both the drive and motherboard ends and look for any bent or missing pins while your at it, some ribbon and drive connectors are missing a pin in the middle on one row but any other pins gone are probably broken off.

Post what you find and we'll go from there.

 

Hi Appzalien!

Yes, we have used a DVD lens cleaner. It didn't help. Well, it has helped in the past, but not this time.

I have no idea about the codec packs. In Add & Remove Programs, I found "Samsung Video Codec" that my husband had installed for our video camera. I deleted it to see if that will help and since we really haven't done anything with the camera.

I didn't find any other programs with Codec in the name, but I found two old audio, photo & video programs that we do not use anymore. I deleted those in case their was any programing that would interfere here.
URGE -Rapsody media
Ulead- Photo Studio
Ulead- Video Studio

I disconnected everything from the tower and opened it up. The IDE ribbons look good... the only pin missing anywhere is the one in the middle. I can tell it is not supposed to be there because there is no hole in the IDE ribbon connector in that spot.

Before reconnecting the computer, I put the Sony DVD-R/RW drive back in. I'm not sure about the connection though. I have the IDE running from the motherboard to the DVD drive, then from the DVD drive to the CD drive. I'm pretty sure that is how it was originally set up. I really don't know what to do with the other little cord/wires though.

The CD-RW shows up in device manager with no ! or ? next to it and it says it's working normally. But when I click on it in My Computer, it says please insert a disk when there is a new manufacture's version of a music CD in the drive.

The DVD-R/RW does not show up in Device Manager at all. I tried to run the Add New Hardware Wizard, but it did not find the DVD drive. I might have the little wires hooked up wrong. :confused

I haven't rebooted after uninstalling the codec and other programs yet. Would that make a difference, maybe?

 

A reboot would be inorder but first a little lesson on extra wires and positioning of the drives on the ide ribbon according to their jumper settings.

Extra wires are sometimes found inside the computer connected to the rom drives usually back at the far wall. These (around 1/2") connectors are for transfering the drives digital or analog signal from the rom drive to the motherboard or soundcard. They are really obsolete and have been for some time but a few manufacturers kept putting them in rather than recycling or landfilling them I guess. They are only necessary on really old (10years or more) computers.

Every rom drive has a set of jumper pins near the power connector that determines how the drive is read. Typically there will be a legend on top of the drive or actually stamped in the metal near the pins to tell you what they are. MA master - SL slave - CS cable select are typical although some drives split the master pins into two categories as Master with Slave (two drives on the ribbon) or Master Alone (only one drive [rom or hard] on the ribbon).

The position on the ribbon is also important, although you might hear different, the Mastered device is always supposed to be connected to the terminating end of the ribbon and the Slave jumpered drive to the middle connector. Often failing to get the jumpers or the positon on the ribbon correct will cause one or more drives not to be recognized.

So:
master jumper your newest drive and put it on the end of the ribbon and slave jumper your older drive and put it in the middle. Sometimes its easiest to switch the drives in their bays to make hooking them up this way easier.

Restart the computer and go to Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager > Dvd/CD-Rom Drives and uninstall any real drives (don't uninstall daemon tools or virtual drives if you have them, it will have SCSI in its name and be a third drive in the list). Restart the PC and Windows will reinstall the drivers for your devices incase they are corrupt in some way. You might also want to run a registry cleaner like the one in Ccleaner (freeware) to get rid of any unwanted registry entires that may be messing with your drives.

If that does'nt do it you can try mastering the old drive and putting it at the end of the ribbon and slaving the new.

If that doesn't do it try using CS or cable select on both drives. Cable Select is supposed to automatically assign the end device as master and middle ribbon device as slave, therefore the name cable select. I have had problems with CS and don't use it but have run across some drives that will only work set as CS.

If you have ever updated the firmware on your drives its possible you used the wrong firmware and messed up the drives system. If you have not, I can tell you more about updating your firmware. Typically its used to add new functions or recognize new kinds of media, but firmware can become corrupt and cause drives not to function correctly. Updating or even reinstalling the same firmware can sometimes correct those problems.

So if this mini novel does'nt help we're on to firmware.

 

OH! I forgot,

Go into your registry to:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Currentversion/policies/explorer/nodrivetypeauto

And tell me whats listed as TYPE and DATA

It should be
REG_BINARY 95 00 00 00

or

REG_DWORD 0x00000091 (145)

What does yours say?

 

Hi Appzalien,

Here's what is in my registry for the path:

Mine is a little different than the option you gave. It is...

I checked on the jump pins. Both of the drives were set as masters. rolleyes oops!
I left the DVD-R/RW as master and plugged it into the terminating end of the IDE ribbon. Then I set the jump pin on the CD-RW to slave and plugged it into the middle portion of IDE ribbon.
Then I plugged the remaining little wires into their corresponding slots on the master drive. The computer was purchased new in 2002.
So... I wasn't sure if you meant that I should not even hook up the little wires at all if the comp was younger than 10 years. Should I just remove the little wires completely?

After hooking my computer back up and booting it up, my computer "found new hardware" twice (a popup bubble on my tool bar for each drive). I went into Device Manager and uninstalled both drives. I ran CCleaner registry cleanup, and rebooted.

After reboot, windows never showed new hardware so I eventually went to Device manager to see if they were there. Both drives were there and properties said that both were working normally. Both of them also show up in My Computer. However neither one recognizes a disk. ("Please insert a disk into the drive.")

I went into device manager and tried to update the drivers for both of them. In both cases, the Wizard could not find better drivers than the ones already installed.
:confused

Also, I don't know if we've ever done anything with firmware. I'm thinking no because it doesn't sound familiar at all.

Thanks for your help Appzalien!
Do you have any more ideas? I didn't try setting the jump pins to CableSelect because both drives are now showing up in device manager and in My Computer. Should I still try that, or is that unnecessary now?

 

As for the different numbers in your nodrivetypeauto, since yours is the REG_DWORD type, it would be best to leave it that way but you can right click and select modify and change the numbers to 0x00000091 (you don't have to enter the (145)) and see what happens. As long as you have a written record of your other numbers to put back, or if you export a copy of that entry (explorer) so you can double click it and put it back it should'nt hurt. Some people are afraid to play with the registry for good reason, a wrong move can really screw things up. But a good practice when you going to change something is to backup a little from the path to the change (policies/explorer/nodrivetypeauto) and save a backup using the export function to your C drive so you can just double click the save file to make things go back the way they were.

Yes, you might want to try CS on both drives (in order for CS to work, both drives have to have the setting available and both must be set as CS or it will not work, the position on the ribbon is not a factor when set to CS) and you can leave the extra wire there, it should'nt be able to do any harm as long as its connected to the correct place on the other end. Before you try CS tho I would swap the drives as master and slave, sometimes a drive refuses to be the slave and causes problems with the other one. So make the CD-RW master (both jumper and end spot on the ribbon) and Dvd as slave before you try the CS. And if neither still see's the disk go back to where your at now (dvd master cd-rw slave).

Make sure you try different disks for it to see as well. If you keep using the same disk and it turns out there is something wrong with the disk would'nt you feel silly?

Ok, the fact that its seeing both drives in Device Manager seems to be a good thing. After you have tried swapping master and slave and then back again if it does'nt help, I'll talk you through a firmware upgrade and we'll do it on the drive that is not having its disks recognized. So while your in Device manager write down and tell me the manufacturers name and model number of the rom drive thats failing the reading of disks.

The registry setting we were talking about has to do with autorunning disks mainly but sometimes a program like Roxio Easy CD Creator will change the registry and several other settings causing all kinds of problems on many machines. Roxio is one of those programs that thinks its wonderful and everything else is at fault if things don't work right. But in reality Roxio is a screwed up burning program and they don't seem to know how to fix it, so they fix your PC instead, to try and make it work with their software. Afterwords, even if you remove Roxio the problems persist because they don't change things back during uninstall. So if you run Roxio or have in the past, you should know that I have found for myself anyway, the only way to fix things after Roxio screws them up is to format and reinstall your entire system.

 

Hi Appzalien,

OK... I tried all the different IDE and jumper pin arrangements that you said. I also uninstalled the drives from device manager each time and rebooted each time.

With the CD-RW as the master and the DVD-R/RW as the slave (both in jump pins and IDE position), it works exactly the same as it did with DVD as master and CD as slave. Both show up in Device Manager and in My Computer but neither one will play a disk. I tried music CDs, simple program/software disks, a Walmart photo CD, and a DVD movie in the DVD drive. It always says "Please insert a disk into the drive" for both devices.

With both drive jump pins set to CS, only the CD-RW is recognized and it has a " behind its name in Device Manager. The DVD-R/RW never shows up. Even trying "Add New Hardware" in Control Panel doesn't find the DVD-R/RW.

So... I changed the DVD's jump pin back to slave, and the CD's jump pin back to master. (The CD-RW is also at the terminating end of the IDE ribbon.) Same as before.. both are recognized and both cannot read a disk.

During all of this, I noticed another issue. Our computer originally came with a Floppy 3 1/2' Drive. At least a year ago, my husband uninstalled and removed this drive because we never use it and it was always in the way when we had to rearrange IDE ribbons, etc. But.. during all these uninstalls and finding new hardware for the CD/DVD-RWs, Windows also keeps finding the Floppy 3 1/2' drive and reinstalling it along with the CD/DVD-RWs. Windows even found and installed the Floppy drive when I had the CS jumper pins set and only the CD-RW was found.

I don't understand how this is possible since there is no floppy drive in the tower and no associated wires. :confused I wonder if this might be part of the problem.

Neither my husband or myself has heard of Roxio so I don't think we've ever had it installed. I changed the registry RG_DWORD type to 0x00000091 and the (91) behind it automatically changed to (145). The modification doesn't seem to have changed anything (for good or bad) so I'll leave it for now.

Now to firmware...
My husband said the he did update the firmware for the DVD-R/RW at one point a long time ago.
While looking through the properties for both drives (in Device Manager), I noticed that on the "Details" tab it has a drop down menu with various categories for further details. One of the categories is "firmware revisions" when I click on that category the display field for details is blank. This is the same for both drives. I don't know if this means anything important, but just thought I'd mention it.

From Device Manager, here are the manufactures and model numbers for both drives.
Master:

Slave:

I also noted the driver information. Both drives have the same Driver Version and Driver Date:

Holy crap that's old! Is there a way to update the drivers manually since the wizard doesn't find anything better?

OK, I think I covered everything from your last post. It looks like we have three avenues to try... the reappearing Floppy drive issue, driver updates, and firmware issues.

Thank you again Appzalien! I'm looking forward to your next post.

 

Don't worry about the drivers being old, Windows uses generic drivers for all cd and dvd optical drives, just because MS wrote them in 2001 doesn't mean there not up to date.

OK, I'm going to forget about the firmware for now because I don't think its your problem. The fact that the floppy keeps installing, even though its not there, concerns me. When you open Device Manger, do you see any yellow exlamation marks at all? I ask because there is a possibility that your motherboards chipset drivers are either not all installed or perhaps became corrupted from a power failure or something.

The floppy needs some looking into. Is the floppies ribbon still connected to the motherboard? its simmilar to a rom drive ribbon but at the end that connects to the floppy drive it has a twist in a small portion of the ribbon. The floppy drive if its still in the PC has a power connector on it too, has that also been removed.

In the bios, there is a setting to look at the floppy drive first and also one that usually says "floppy seek" enable disable. You know, it almost seems like the PC is looking at one of the rom drives as a floppy not an optical drive.

There are also typically two IDE ribbons connected to the motherboard, one is Primary (for OS mastered hard drive) and the other is Secondary (for other hard or optical drives) and they are usually marked on the motherboard in some fashion. The floppy connection on the motherboard is separate from these two and not quite as long.

I really don't know where to go from here. Its very difficult not being able to just look inside the PC for myself. We should invent the service cam. You could try using only one rom drive at a time, mastered at the end of the ribbon and see if you can determine if one drive is bad causing both to fail. Also try removing that extra wire just incase its not connected to the motherboard correctly and may be causing problems.

 

A lttle note on determining your firmware for optical drives. If you go into Device Manager and pick each drive in turn and right click properties then look under the DETAILS tab you'll see a long string of text and numbers and the firmware version with follow the first string of text.

Here is whats there for my Plextor CD-RW
IDE\CDROMPLEXTOR_CD-R___PREMIUM__________________1.06____\5&31D9F85&0&0.0.0
and its firmware version is 1.06

Here is whats there for my Plextor Dvd-RW
IDE\CDROMPLEXTOR_DVDR___PX-716A__________________1.09____\5&31D9F85&0&0.1.0
and its firmware is 1.09

just to see something differents here is another PC, a LiteOn CD-RW/DVD Player
IDE/CDROMLITE-ON_COMBO_SOHC-5232K__________________NK0J____\5&3A54B256&0&0.1.0

Lite has its firmware version as NK0J (previous versions NK0H NK0I)

Now that you know how to determine what version you have, you can use your model number to look up to see if the manufacturer has a newer version for your drive. It will have a higher number or an ending letter that moves up the alphabet. They also usually list a change log of whats improved for each firmware version (recognizes more media/ faster burn speeds) as well as a tutorial to tell you how to update. Some manufacturers have a download that will automatically update it for you but I don't like those, there are too many horror stories.

 

Just any interjection with a small suggestion. With the drives hooked and windows showing them as working, have you've tried booting your computer up with a bootable cd such as a windows xp cd or a flavor of a linux live cd? This would at least confirm that the hardware IS actually working and that your problem is buried somewheres deep in windows. Let us know if you don't know how to set the boot order in the bios to boot from the cd first.

 

Hi Appzalien and Icsmith39.

Sorry it took me so long to reply. I've been running around trying to get kiddies supplies for Back-to-School on Monday. Sheesh, it's crazy out there! rolleyes

I haven't opened up my tower again yet, I just wanted to address some of the things in your posts before hand. I'll go back in for another look right after this post.

In Device Manager I looked at ALL the devices and not a single one had a yellow exclamation point.

Floppy:
There are only two IDE ribbons in the computer. One starts at the mother board and goes to the hard drive, and the other one starts at the motherboard and goes to the DVD drive and then to the CD drive. Neither of these IDEs has a twist in any part of the ribbon. The power wire for the floppy drive has also been removed, but I just did this myself during the switching positions of the CD & DVD drives process. My husband had apparently left it in there when he removed the Floppy drive a long time ago. After I removed the power cord, Windows still found the Floppy Drive and reinstalled it again.

I would like to try the Bios suggestions but I've never been in there and am embarrassed to say, I don't even know how to get there. Don't you have to press an F key before Windows loads or something? The only one I know is F8 for safe mode.

Thank you for letting me know how to find out what firmware I have! I searched all over the internet the other night trying to figure it out (to no avail). I can't believe it was right there in the Details tab all along. Haha
In case it matters at some point, here are my firmware versions:

The TEAC CD drive's firmware: 2.0A
The SONY DVD drive's firmware: JY08

OK, I'm going to try one drive at a time and I'll also remove the the extra wires. One other thing in this area.... The power bundle of wires that comes from the power source goes to the DVD drive (slave) and then to the CD drive (master), and then from there, to a smaller connector that is not plugged into anything. My husband said this was for an external drive that we don't have anymore. Is it alright to have it just hanging in there, unconnected to anything? I can't remove it because it's part of the whole power wire bundle.

Alright, I'll let you know how it goes with only one drive at a time.

I definitely want to try the Bios thing, but need a few pointers first.

Thanks again!

 

Before you get into all that mess, I think you should still try some bootable type of cd. This will really help to tell if you if your cd roms are actually working and tell you which way to go from there.

 

I have been away. To get into the bios usually you hit the DEL key at a specific time during start up. Often there will be some wording at the bottom or top of the screen during boot that will say "press DEL to enter the BIOS" or something similar. Some OEM computers (e-machines dell compac) use their own keys and don't tell you what they are, so you will have to try some F1 F2 F3 F10 etc. during boot to see if you can find it.
Del key is standard on most motherboards.

What lcsmith39 is saying makes sense. A boot cd loads a set of rom drivers into your ram memory for the purpose of using the drives to launch its applications. What he's telling you is it will test the drives, out side of the Windows environment, to help you determine if your problem is windows or the hardware. If you can't boot to a working cd then chances are its your hardware or its hookup. So from the bios set your system to boot from cd first get a freeware boot cd (Barts PE) that you can burn and test that it works on another system, and then test your drives with it.

The smaller power connection sounds like the floppy power and you don't have to worry about it I have a lot of unconnected power plugs in my PC, you can tie it off somewhere if it bothers you with its own wire or use a tie made for that purpose you can get at Radio Shack.

It sure seems to me that your drive or drives are being detected as the floppy. On my older motherboards there are three places to put ide ribbons the hard drive and rom drive connectors are always together one labeled as Primary (OS hard drive gets mastered here) and the other secondary (extra hard drives and or rom drives) the third one is off by itself and just a little shorter than the others and that's the one for the floppy drive. If somehow you connected the cd-rom ribbon to the floppy drive conncector on the motherboard you could have created your problem. No drives detected (the floppy connector doesn't work for rom drives) and it would attempt to load the floppy thats not there (cause something is connected there).