Windows Explorer No Longer Reads Blank Cd/dvd

[itobor]

Have EMC-8 installed on this laptop (EMC-10 is on my desktop and no problem there) , and that is when first noticed the issue, but not sure it is related to EMC-8.

 

Toshiba Tecra M3 running XP pro. Windows Explorer will not recognise the presence of a blank (even a blank formatted) CD or DVD in the Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-630S drive. Driver re-installation not work - no updated driver available. Have tried numerous brands of media (Verbatim, Sony, etc)

 

EVERYTHING ELSE WORKS ON THE CD/DVD DRIVE. It will read CD/DVD (with Explorer or from within other programs such as EMC-8) as long as there is content on the CD/DVD. It will also burn CD/DVD in EMC10 (or Imgburn), though sometimes a program will refuse to recognise that there is a blank writable media in the drive (such as when tried to use Ghost 14 to burn a recovery disk).

 

I can usually work around this issue (if the media will not read in Explorer, I know it is blank), but would dearly love to "fix" the issue as it is a bit of a pain not being able to totally rely on Explorer to take a quick look at a disk.

 

I recognise that may or may not be related to Roxio software (and maybe I deserve to be flamed), but my own googling has not found any answer for this quirk.

 

Has anyone else out there experienced this?

[Jim_Hardin]

Print out and follow the Clean Install to the letter! Here

[itobor]

Print out and follow the Clean Install to the letter! Here

 

Yes- did that several times with EMC-10 (to the letter) on the laptop before finally taking your suggestion (from 2 months ago) and got a new hard drive in the laptop and started over re-installing all the various software, settings, data etc (lots of fun!). But this time I decided EMC-10 was too much for the laptop, so put the EMC-10 on my new Vista desktop, and put EMC-8 (which I have had for several years) on the laptop.

 

Also, this time around I use Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image 11 to save an image BEFORE putting on any Roxio product on any machine, so I can go back to the previous image rather than go by way of clean install

 

Thanks for responding

[Jim_Hardin]

Do the clean install to the letter.

 

Images also include flaws.

[itobor]

Do the clean install to the letter.

 

Images also include flaws.

 

MYSTERY SOLVED (I hope)

 

I later noticed that the properties of the CD/DVD drive did not include the tab for "recording" (open"My Computer" in XP right click on CD/DVD drive - properties - should be a tab for "recording).

 

I had to go into registry with regedit and follow Microsoft Support Bulletin 316529 and edit the appropriate registry entry so that the CD/DVD drive was designated as "2". Somehow it had been changed to a "3" (I know it was originally "2" because I did a restore with Norton Ghost to a few days prior and it was a "2" in the older image). Not sure which program or update caused the switch.

 

XP does not recognise a "3" as a recordable device (hence will not access blank media - only media that can be read - treating the drive as if it was a -ROM drive - read only).

 

After changing the registry to designate the drive as a "2", the recording tab showed up on the properties, and under that tab I enabled the drive to write - and since then it recognises when a blank DVD or CD is in the drive.

 

All that is left is to check out all the elements of EMC-8 to make sure they all still work properly (fingers crossed).

 

 

 

[Brendon]

In case anyone gets this mixed up with the filter entries issue, the registry key at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CD Burning\Drives holds a Volume entry for each of your installed drives which has values for

CurrentCDWriteSpeed

Drive Type

MaxCDWriteSpeed

 

It is the Drive Type value which gets changed.

 

Regards,

Brendon