Unable to Access CD/DVD drives

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Problem accessing CD/DVD Drives

I have two CD/DVD drives that were both working perfectly prior to restoring
the system state (needed to shed a bad patch to an application). Following
the restore:

1. Device Manager lists both CD/DVD Drives with the correct information, but
both also display the yellow explanation mark!
SONY DVD RW DRU-720A
TSSTcorp CDRW/DVD TSH492B
2. I am unable to access either drive with Explorer nor do they show up in
"My Computer", but I can boot from either without difficulty.
3. Using Device Manager, I have uninstalled and reinstalled both drives
several times and Windows XP Pro keeps selecting a driver for each that
appears to be the correct driver (i.e., the device instance ID and driver
details for both appear to be correct).
3. If I try changing the driver by searching Windows Update, the response
comes back that the best driver is already installed.
4. The troubleshooter indicates that I may have corrupt drivers, but no
indication what file(s) should to be reloaded or updated!
5. The manufactures say the drivers are already part of Windows XP Pro
w/SP-2 which I am running.

I have my original Windows XP Pro disk.

Any help on where I should go from here would be appreciated.

Ed
 
If you right click the devices in Device Manager and then select driver
details and let us know which files are used, chances are one of the files
is a third party app that's not working and once we know that file you can
remove it from the registry or reinstall the program that causing the
problem.
 
ADDED INFORMATION:

I just realized that the "resotre point" I used was prior to my installing
an additional HDD and reassinging all the drive letters. Could this simply
be a problem with the registry?
 
Thanks Paul:

Here are the Driver Details:

For both the Sony & TSSC Drives:

C\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\Cdr4_xp.sys (Sonic Solutions)
C\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\Cdralw2k.sys (Sonic Solutions)
C\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\cdrom.sys (Windows) has green ck mark
C\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\drvmcdb.sys (Sonic Solutions)
C\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\imapi.sys (Windows) has green ck mark
C\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\iomdisk.sys (Iomega)
C\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\pwd_2k.sys (Sonic Solutions)
C\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\PxHelp20.sys (Sonic Solutions)
C\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\redbook.sys (Windows) has green ck mark
C\WINDOWS\system32\storprop.dll (windows) has green ck mark

.... and before you ask, "Yes" the orignial drive letters were assigned to my
USB plug & play zip dirve and compact flash readers.
 
Wow that is more third party drivers than I thought you'd have.
I'm really not sure what to suggest now!
Personally I would either search your registry for iomdisk.sys and remove
all entries or uninstall the iomega zip software then uninstall the CDs from
device manager and let windows redetect them.
Problem with both is they may stop your zip drive working and it doesn't fix
your CD then you're left without both.
Maybe check the iomega website and see if they have updated drivers you can
install for your zip drive then if your CDs still don't work uninstall them
from device manager and then scan for new devices and see if you get the
same problem.
 
Once again, thanks for the suggestion, but I'm running two nearly identical
machines configured exactly the same except for the DVD reader (different
model). Guess what -- that machine shows the same list of device drivers for
the both CD-ROM and DVD drives, with green check marks at the same place.
All is well with that machine -- I'm now wondering if the windows drivers are
just failing to load on startup (or during login).
 
Ok, I will stop suggesting things, but just a thought... If everything
worked the same on almost identical machines no matter what other software
was installed on each computer, problems would be so easy to identify.
 
EdN_OPKS said:
Problem accessing CD/DVD Drives

I have two CD/DVD drives that were both working perfectly prior to
restoring
the system state (needed to shed a bad patch to an application).
Following
the restore:

1. Device Manager lists both CD/DVD Drives with the correct information,
but
both also display the yellow explanation mark!
SONY DVD RW DRU-720A
TSSTcorp CDRW/DVD TSH492B
2. I am unable to access either drive with Explorer nor do they show up in
"My Computer", but I can boot from either without difficulty.
3. Using Device Manager, I have uninstalled and reinstalled both drives
several times and Windows XP Pro keeps selecting a driver for each that
appears to be the correct driver (i.e., the device instance ID and driver
details for both appear to be correct).
3. If I try changing the driver by searching Windows Update, the response
comes back that the best driver is already installed.
4. The troubleshooter indicates that I may have corrupt drivers, but no
indication what file(s) should to be reloaded or updated!
5. The manufactures say the drivers are already part of Windows XP Pro
w/SP-2 which I am running.

I have my original Windows XP Pro disk.

Any help on where I should go from here would be appreciated.

Ed
Click to expand...


Ed:
1. I assume neither optical drive is reflected in Disk Management, right?

2. Aside from this non-recognition problem, the system boots without
incident and functions without any problems?

3. Have you tried disconnecting the optical drives from your system; then
booting up without them; shutting down the machine and reconnecting them and
then booting up again? If not, do so.

4. Have you tried changing the IDE channel connection for one or both
optical drives?

5. The optical drives are reflected in the BIOS?

6. If all else fails, I'm wondering whether a Repair install of the OS would
be in order here. Have you considered this?

6. And once again...There are no other problems with the system other than
this non-recognition of the two optical drives, right?
Anna
 
Hi Anna:

Actually BOTH drives are reflected (corectly) in Device Manager and,
following the troubleshooting procedures, everything seems to point to a
corrupt driver. Seeing that the Event Log shows that the "cdrom.sys" driver
failed to load at boot-up, I have reinstalled this dirver from the Windows
disk, but it didn't help -- same set of errors.

Yes, I can boot from either of these optical drives, so I know the BIOS is
handling the interface okay.
 
Yeah, Paul, I'm with you -- I'm totally stumped on this one, but will
continue doing some cross-checking between the two machines to see where
things diverge!
 
Yeah I was actually subtly saying my last suggestion made sense and if you
want to disregard it completely then I can't help you..
if cdrom.sys is failing to load but still has the green check next to it
saying it's signed by MS then the problem is probably caused by one of the
other drivers loaded by the CDROM. As one of these is an Iomega one and you
said you had probs after setting up a zip drive it's probably the cause. The
point I was making is that even though it works fine on another machine it
doesn't matter.. I'm pretty sure Iomega wouldn't of released it if they knew
it caused all PCs to lose their CDROM drives.
 
EdN_OPKS said:
Hi Anna:

Actually BOTH drives are reflected (corectly) in Device Manager and,
following the troubleshooting procedures, everything seems to point to a
corrupt driver. Seeing that the Event Log shows that the "cdrom.sys"
driver
failed to load at boot-up, I have reinstalled this dirver from the Windows
disk, but it didn't help -- same set of errors.

Yes, I can boot from either of these optical drives, so I know the BIOS is
handling the interface okay.
Click to expand...


Ed:
Please note I asked whether the optical drives were being correctly
reflected in Disk Management, *not* Device Manager. Are they?

And if they are listed, but without drive letter assignments, are you able
to do so in Disk Management?

And did you undertake any of my suggestions that I listed in items 3 & 4?
Anna
 
Anna: (and Paul)

Sorry, but I did misunderstand what you were asking. Thanks to your
suggestion, I checked and neither optical drive was reflected in Disk Manager
(only HDDs). Soooo...

Final solution: I resorted to doing a System Restore using a 30-day old
backup (prior to the time system errors started to occur) and all is now back
to normal.

I sincerely appreciate both your and Paul's assistance -- your feedback
really helped point me in the right direction.

Ed
 
Thanks "paladon" and while it's been awhile since I managed to fix this
issue, the refference you provided contained a wealth of information that
I've safely stored on my computer should I ever be faced with this little
gremlin again.

Ed
 
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