No longer reading CD DVD drives

  • Thread starter Thread starter zaconline
  • Start date Start date
Z

zaconline

I have a Yamaha CDW2100E drive, which has worked fine for
several years. However, recently
it stopped reading disks. The drive appears in "my
computer" and in device manager, but no longer
reads any CDROM, not the ones I have burned or ones that
have been commercially produced.
What makes this an even stranger problem is that the DVD
drive which came with my Micron Millennia
4 years ago, has also stopped reading CDs.

I tried disconnecting the cable of each of the drives and
reconfiguring the cable so that only the
CD_RW drive was connected. Same problem. I replaced the
cable and thought it was fixed when
it then read the disks in both drives. But then when I
changed the disks in each drive, neither
would read the new disk. I tried formatting with INCD
which it said it had done successfully, but then
I could not write to the drive. I tried using NERO burn
to record a disk, which it said had been
successful, but again I could not read it. The DVD drive
label does still appear in my computer after
I re-boot on occasion, but doesn't read any subsequent
disks.

The error message is: "Windows cannot read from this
disk. The disk might be corrupted or it could be using a
format that is not compatible with windows."

Is it possible this is a Windows XP problem or a software
problem? The only changes I recall
making in the last number of months, were to install all
of the XP updates and to install Norton
Internet Security.

I am a loss to figure out how next to troubleshoot this
problem. Any ideas?
 
Have you tried replaceing with a know good drive? At
least that could narrow it down somewhat
 
I have not tried replacing either drive yet, because it
didn't seem logical that both the cd-rw drive AND the
DVD drive, different manufacturers, different installation
time and different amount of usage would BOTH go bad at
the same time.

Before I try installing a new drive I am looking for other
suggestions.

I did try uninstalling the cd-rw drive and letting windows
find and install it again.
 
There is an additional problem. When I try to read from
any usb card reader, I get the message: "the disk is not
formatted. Would you like to format it now?" But the
disk is a compact flash disk with digital photographs on
it. So the problem seems to be the computer's inability
to read from any drive, besides the hard drive!
 
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