windows cannot read a CD

[beep]

Hello,
Using winXP pro with SP1

Both CD player and burner are detected by windows explorer and device manager with no problems noted.

Any CD (including audio) cannot be detected by windows

Can burn from HDD using Nero

Can play audio CD through media player

This initially seemed to be a case of EZ CD creator not being fully removed. On startup windows said CD players disabled. we followed the insructions and removed upper and lower filter settings from registry, but now left with the above situation, but windows no longer gives any indication of a problemm except when we try to open a CD. In this case it either says "put a CD in the drive" or "unable to read the file type(or words to that effect)"

Any ideas greatfuly accepted.

[IANUK]

Hi mate have the same prob on mine all was ok till I installed Nero , appears it causes conflicts having 2 cd progs , I have 2 partitions on my HD & cd creator works no problem on the partition without Nero , will reformat when I get the time , did try unisalling 1 of the progs but it must leave some files on the hd .

IANUK

[beep]

thanks Ian, got any idea how to get it going again without reformatting

[saphalline]

What does Device Manager say about your drives? What does it say about your sound card? What does DXDiag say about your sound devices/drivers? Anything amiss?

[beep]

Hi There seems to be nothing wrong with the any drivers.

Music match will play a music CD and nero will copy a CD, but cannot explore a CD.

The XP CD will boot at startup.

In My Computer the CD drive icon changes to show a CD is in the drive, but windows cannot read it.

As I mentioned above I removed the upper and lower filter settings in the registry which relates to EZ CD creator.

At least there is no longer the hardware disabled message on startup.

I have also tried a nero registry fixer to no avail.

sometimes windows throws a message saying it cannot read the file type and maybe the File drivers are corrupt.
:confused:

[ski]

Reinstall Easy CD Creator, and then uninstall it per the following and see if that helps:
http://www.plextor.com/english/support/faqs/SW00017.htm

[Paul Komski]

got any idea how to get it going again without reformatting

You could try a Repair Installation (http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm) - no guarantees and have your cd key ready.

[beep]

paul thanks for the site on repair installation. Good and clear.
I might have to try this as I cant try reinstalling EZ because I can't read the CD.

[Sylvander]

Your Windows installation cannot read the CD, but:
If you had Win98 you'd use a startup disk with its CD drivers to run the setup.exe file to install "Easy CD Creator" [having first uninstalled it].
Does XP make a floppy startup disk?
I know it's possible to make a bootable CD using the XP installation disk, but I don't know if that includes generic drivers for the CD-drives. Paul is the expert on that.

[Paul Komski]

I know it's possible to make a bootable CD using the XP installation disk
If you want to make a bootable BartPE CD (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) you will need the WinXP installation files slipstreamed with SP1 as part of the process.

Does XP make a floppy startup disk?
You can choose to "Create a MS-DOS StartUp Diskette" from the Format options. This is the most basic of bootable diskettes. You can boot to it and explore HDD/FDD FAT partitions but it comes with no utilities and no CD drivers so cant explore any CDs. Better to use a Win98 or WinME startup diskette or one from bootdisk.com if that is what you want.

I'm just not sure how this would help to install EZ CDC from within WinXP - unless that doesnt matter or unless you were just using it to copy the CD's installation files in order to later install it from the HDD.

[Sylvander]

Am I wrong in assuming that "Easy CD Creator" could be installed from DOS just like Windows can?

Must applications be installed from within Windows?

[Paul Komski]

EZ CD Creator I don't know, but AFAIK some apps have to have just their exe file in the correct location (eg HijackThis/Mozilla/Eraser) and it can be executed from anywhere. MSOffice/NAV/etc have to be installed from within Windows in order to set up the Registry entries and so on. I'm just assuming that if you install something from within DOS there is no reason to expect that Windows has been installed at all - if you see what I mean.

[beep]

I'm not sure I follow this discussion but I tried reading a CD from a command line and it wouldn't.

[Paleo Pete]

Sounds to me like it's time to do some thorough scanning for viruses, trojans and other malware. Go with your antivirus first, if it won't run that's a good tip off. In that case go to HouseCall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp) and try an online scan.

Then download and install Adaware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/), Spybot (http://security.kolla.de/) and Hijack This (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html).

Copy Hijack This to its own folder, unzip and run it from there, NOT from a Temp file or the desktop. Save your log and copy & paste it into a thread in the Applications and Security forum, or here and we'll move it. DO NOT fix anything until we have a look at it.

My reasoning is this-I'm seeing more malware all the time, especially viruses, that disable CD ROM drives, system utilities like msconfig or system file checker and most viruses disable antivirus software. We haven't been able to pinpoint anything else, so I think it's time to go crudware hunting.

[Sylvander]

A Win98 startup disk [and ME also I assume] includes generic CD-drive drivers. If you use the startup disk [using these drivers] to boot from, "with CD-ROM support", and cannot access your CD-drives from an a:\> prompt, then it's likely they have a hardware problem, not a software problem.
There's the unlikely possibility that the generic drivers aren't suitable for the drives, but most likely they'll be OK.
Accessing a CD-drive in this way is a standard method of checking whether the drive is capable of being accessed.
If they work and the the drive is acessed successfully, then there's nothing wrong with the hardware. Usually that suggests a driver problem, but as Pete says, it could be nasties doing their evil deeds.

If you try to access the drives from a Windows command prompt, the installed CD-drivers would be used, and since they could be the source of the problem, this does not act as a check.

Make certain your startup disk is write protected.

"I'm not sure I follow this discussion"
I was thinking that if you could access your CD-ROM using a startup disk you may have been able to install "Easy CD Creator" from its install CD using that startup disk. But Paul was saying that it probably must be installed from within Windows so that the settings can be put in the registry.

[Paleo Pete]

Sylvander is absolutely right, a win98/ME start up disk would be a great troubleshooting step. Don't know why I never thought of it, that's a standard thing for me, but I missed it...oh well...

But the A:/> prompt will get you the floppy drive. CD ROM will be E:/> on a standard single hard drive system. Definitely try that, if it works in DOS and doesn't in Windows, check for malware. If it doesn't work in DOS, go shopping.

[Sylvander]

The startup disk will present you with the a:\> prompt and you type commands there like:

a:\>dir e: /p

which will display the directories on the CD in the e: drive one "page" at a time. The /p parameter makes the dir command display the results one page at a time.
You've got to try to figure out which letter the drive has been allocated and make certain the disk is in the drive given the letter you use in the command.

n.b. Backslashes represent folders & "DOS parameters" follow forward slashes. Be careful not to use them incorrectly.

[beep]

Thanks all for your help. I eventually had to do a repair install which worked perfectly.