Help -- dvd burners appear as generic hard disks

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Microwave

And consequently I can't get most apps to burn to them -- only Nero and
Media player see the dvd burners. Windows explorer only seens generic
local disk. I'm sure there's a registry fix somewhere....
 
And consequently I can't get most apps to burn to them -- only Nero and
Media player see the dvd burners. Windows explorer only seens generic
local disk. I'm sure there's a registry fix somewhere....
Click to expand...

This is not unusual. Not all drives are supported by all burning
applications including XP's burning component. A few years ago, I had to
switch from Ahead's Nero/InCD package to Roxio for this reason.

Sometimes an update in a software package will add support for a model.
Other times a firmware update for the hardware comes through that allows it
to be more compatible with a wider variety of applications.
 
Sharon said:
This is not unusual. Not all drives are supported by all burning
applications including XP's burning component. A few years ago, I had to
switch from Ahead's Nero/InCD package to Roxio for this reason.

Sometimes an update in a software package will add support for a model.
Other times a firmware update for the hardware comes through that allows it
to be more compatible with a wider variety of applications.
Click to expand...
I did upgrade the firmware, and Nero. Nero sees the drives fine, the
disk management snapin sees them as DVDs, iTunes sees them as burners,
only windows Explorer doesn't -- oh and his favourite app WinRip. I
wouldn't care but it's for the uberBoss who's alarmed by not being able
to soft eject or burn from WinRip (and the frequent warnings about low
disk space on CDs/DVDs, but I disabled that in the registry.

I wouldn't normally care but sometimes your users can't understand why
if it was working properly at one point and as the IT person you can't
make it work exactly the same way by fixing it. It's also disconcerting
not being able to fix something. It's really only Windows Explorer
that's the problem, and I'm sure there must be a registry setting that
tells it that $drive is removable media....very frustrating, I must have
spent 10 hours now trying to figure this one out....I've tried upgrading
the ide drivers, removing and letting the hardware wizard refind the ide
controller, the ide bus controller, the drives themselves....it's also
not user specific as creating a new and logging in illicited the same
odd behaviour.
 
I did upgrade the firmware, and Nero. Nero sees the drives fine, the
disk management snapin sees them as DVDs, iTunes sees them as burners,
only windows Explorer doesn't -- oh and his favourite app WinRip. I
wouldn't care but it's for the uberBoss who's alarmed by not being able
to soft eject or burn from WinRip (and the frequent warnings about low
disk space on CDs/DVDs, but I disabled that in the registry.

I wouldn't normally care but sometimes your users can't understand why
if it was working properly at one point and as the IT person you can't
make it work exactly the same way by fixing it. It's also disconcerting
not being able to fix something. It's really only Windows Explorer
that's the problem, and I'm sure there must be a registry setting that
tells it that $drive is removable media....very frustrating, I must have
spent 10 hours now trying to figure this one out....I've tried upgrading
the ide drivers, removing and letting the hardware wizard refind the ide
controller, the ide bus controller, the drives themselves....it's also
not user specific as creating a new and logging in illicited the same
odd behaviour.
Click to expand...

Move the line over a bit in regards to "your users." MVPs are not MS
employees. We're users helping users.

I understand your frustrations with this as I've faced it myself. Had a
free Nero that came with a CD burner and a free Nero that came with the DVD
burner that I mentioned before. Either drive worked fine on its own.

Install both and things went a little off-kilter. After a bit of
troubleshooting, the bottom line was the Nero software. Although free with
a drive, upgrading a free version only supports one drive. Must purchase
Nero to get support for more than one or settle for only one drive being
correctly recognized. As I mentioned before the DVD burner was not fully
supported in all of the Nero programs so made the switch to another brand
of burning software.

Don't know if the free upgraded Nero still imposes these limits. If it does
and that's what you're using, that might be part of the problem. When I had
to deal with it, I found that little tidbit about multiple drives
documented in their online support area. If it still applies, that document
will still be available on their site.

The following MS Knowledge Base article may be of some help too:

CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is not recognized as a recordable device
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=316529
 
Sharon said:
Move the line over a bit in regards to "your users." MVPs are not MS
employees. We're users helping users.

I understand your frustrations with this as I've faced it myself. Had a
free Nero that came with a CD burner and a free Nero that came with the DVD
burner that I mentioned before. Either drive worked fine on its own.

Install both and things went a little off-kilter. After a bit of
troubleshooting, the bottom line was the Nero software. Although free with
a drive, upgrading a free version only supports one drive. Must purchase
Nero to get support for more than one or settle for only one drive being
correctly recognized. As I mentioned before the DVD burner was not fully
supported in all of the Nero programs so made the switch to another brand
of burning software.

Don't know if the free upgraded Nero still imposes these limits. If it does
and that's what you're using, that might be part of the problem. When I had
to deal with it, I found that little tidbit about multiple drives
documented in their online support area. If it still applies, that document
will still be available on their site.

The following MS Knowledge Base article may be of some help too:

CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is not recognized as a recordable device
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=316529
Click to expand...

I meant "your users" as to mean "one's users" -- i.e. I'm the support
bod here and I have to make it nice for all the other employees here --
"the users."

I have a full version of Nero, purchased from Ahead.de for the machine
in question. But even before I installed nero it was showing the drives
as hard disks, not removable devices. I'm sure it's something to do with
windows explorer and I have a sneaking suspicion it's a registry value,
but haven't worked out which one yet.
 
Sharon F wrote:

I meant "your users" as to mean "one's users" -- i.e. I'm the support
bod here and I have to make it nice for all the other employees here --
"the users."

I have a full version of Nero, purchased from Ahead.de for the machine
in question. But even before I installed nero it was showing the drives
as hard disks, not removable devices. I'm sure it's something to do with
windows explorer and I have a sneaking suspicion it's a registry value,
but haven't worked out which one yet.
Click to expand...

Understand your reference to users now. Did you check out that article I
linked? It refers to registry keys related to burners. Here's the URL again
in case you've cleared the other message from your newsreader already:

CD-R drive or CD-RW drive is not recognized as a recordable device
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=316529

May find some clues in this article as well:
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpcd.htm

Also suggest checking the Nero site for recent updates.

I currently have Roxio installed (and am looking forward to returning to
Nero when this version conks out). With Roxio, the IMAPI service is not
active. If I'm remembering correctly, Nero can co-exist with the service
but you might try toggling it on or off (opposite of what you have at the
moment) and restarting to see if there's any change.
 
[/QUOTE]

Rt-click on the drive, "Enable Recording"?

Frankly, I prefer to keep that disabled - XP's native recordingblows
chunks out both ends, combining as it does the disadvantages of RW
disks and straight recordables.
I did upgrade the firmware
Click to expand...

Curiosity: Did this cause XP to "lose a life" (activation) on the
basis your optical drive had "changed"? There's no UI to determine
this in XP, you'd have to use Licenturion's XPInfo tool.
only windows Explorer doesn't -- oh and his favourite app WinRip. I
wouldn't care but it's for the uberBoss who's alarmed by not being able
to soft eject or burn from WinRip
Click to expand...

Does WinRip care aboutwhat Explorer sees? Most apps don't
It's really only Windows Explorer that's the problem, and I'm
sure there must be a registry setting that tells it that $drive is
removable media....very frustrating
Click to expand...

Odd indeed. Seeing a writer ans a ROM is common -and is the problem I
thought you had -but seeing it as a HD is odd. I'd suspect misapplied
settings dueto drive letter chess; is there a HD volume orLAN share
mapped over the writer's drive letter?


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Click to expand...
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better one at http://topicdrift.blogspot.com instead!
 
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