CD and DVD will not read disks

I have a Dell Dimension 3000 with Windows XP Home Edition OS. There is a Samsung CD player/ writer and a separate Philips DVD reader. Whenever I put either a blank or a written disk in either drive I get a message saying please install disk. I have done just about everything including manually removing both and reinstalling, uninstalling both through "uninstall", restoring system to a different time, updating drivers, deleting Roxio software, downloading Dell recommendations, downloading every XP fix, removing the filters etc. but to no avail. Interestingly this seems to be a common problem with no solution. All utilities say system is working fine. Any suggestions?

 

Did the driver used to read media?

Have you tried updating the firmware?

 

Yes I updated firmware and both read disks prior. I am new to the workings of computers and I have the time to try various cures but there is much I do not know. For instance I downloaded a program called autorun from sysinternals and that rapidly allows me to see the registry for all drivers. I have found that I am missing things like PCIDump, SDDM12, changer which is a subfile of cdrom, and others and I do not know what these are or their importance. Also under properties for each cd/dvd player I get general, properties, DVD region,volume and drives and under properties I do not get the words read or write which I think belong there. Is it possible that my updated Norton antivirus and/or the current Ad-Aware have deleted files that they believe to be viruses or spyware? Sorry to seem so computer illiterate but i am learning and quite franly enjoying the quest. Thank you for your response.

 

There's that dreaded Roxio software again. Its been awhile but I once installed Roxio and it screwed up my system so bad I had to format and reinstall to fix it. Just uninstalling Roxio did nothing. A few years later and few versions in I decided to try it again and.. well lets just say "once bitten, twice shy" and I never will use it again. As far as I can figure Roxio has no business making burning software or any software for that matter. It would seem that they have trouble making their crap work so they alter your system files and registry to make it work instead of fixing the problem. Unfortunately on 60% of the sytems out there it breaks them instead of fixing them. Then to make matters worse they don't bother to put back the changes they make when uninstalling so it leaves your system broken.

There's no guarantee that a total reinstall will fix your problem, there could be other issues here and not necessarily Roxio at fault. But if I were you I would seriously think about it.

 

After having the computer for 3 years or so and without a working cd or dvd I am reluctant to reinstall the OS since backing up the files is impossible. I did take the advice of Major Geeks and downloaded CDBurnXP which seems great but obviously did not find a disk in the cd or dvd. I have thought about a replacement drive and that may be the route I take but I thank you for your help. I did try to clean the cd and dvd with air but the fact the both fail to read makes me suspicious of software rather the hardware. Thanks again.

 

Not really. I have computers without burners. I attach a USB external drive and put the backup on there.

 

Have you tried booting to a disc to verify that the drives are mechanically and technologically able to read discs? It could be that the drive controller on the motherboard has failed and you could test it by simply trying to boot to a Windows CD, or any other bootable CD like a memory diagnostic, hard drive diagnostic, or a 'live' OS disc like the UBCD4Win or a Knoppix disc which is a bootable Linux distro.

 

Thanks for the info. At this time I do not think I have a bootable CD anywhere but I will look further. Since the computer is a Dell it did not come with one and I only made a recovery disc and that gets the same "please insert a disk into drive D" when I put it in the tray.

 

Its a Dell? never mind.

 

It took a while but it appears that the disc players can read disc as a relative was able to open the system in DOS and it read the info on a game disc. Also the WinXP backup disc runs but does not show on the screen.