Vista X64 Stopped Recognising DVD drives

[TheWakeUpCall]

I've googled everywhere and I cannot find a solution. Loads of people seem to have this problem, but none of them post a solution that works for me.

Basically, these are two brand new SATA drives and they work fine. I installed Vista from one them a couple of days ago and then installed some software from the other to check they both work, and they do.

I just put in a Ubuntu Live CD in one of them to check it's not the hardware that's the problem, and it was loading it so that's fine.

So basically, I have Vista x64, and it was all working fine and then the next minute I had been installing loads of stuff and the drives stopped working. They still appear in the Computer, and you can open and close the trays, but if you ever try to open a disc it says "D:\ Application not found". I have uninstalled them and reinstalled them. I installed SP1, did nothing still.

Does anyone have any ideas?

 

[karym6]

I have been using Vista for a while now and have not had this problem unfortunately. What have you tried so far? Also, what application did you install recently, maybe you have installed something that locks the drive?

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Well, in that time period I installed iTunes, Virtual Clonedrive, but I think what did it was the motherboard drivers I installed. However, I have uninstalled these and they problem still persists.

I can't do a system restore, because I have too much newer stuff on here since then. I did try one before, going back before installing motherboard drivers and it still didn't work.

I have reinstalled the devices and that doesn't help. I have deleted some registry keys which some people suggested, but that didn't work and apparently that stops you from burning discs on the drives, so I put the keys back.

I have a feeling that there are so dodgey registry keys lying about somewhere, because it's behaving like it thinks that there is something in the drive, and it is trying to load an autorun? I don't know tbh.

I tried going into command prompt, and did "cd E:\" but it said "Drive Not Ready". Which is totally odd.

I just don't have any more ideas! Vista thinks the drive is working perfectly, but it can't read any discs, and all programs throw errors whenever they try to read what's on the discs.

 

[karym6]

Sack VirtualClonedrive and see if that helps first.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Yeah i've uninstalled it and restarted and it did nothing

I just remembered, I also installed k-lite codec pack I think. I'll try uninstalling that. This is annoying though, I need all these programs!

UPDATE: Did nothing.

 

[karym6]

what does the event log say when you try to access a drive?

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

I can't find any events being made. Where will it be under?

 

[ekwat]

Virtualclonedrive sounds suspiciously like the culprit. I'm not familiar with Vista but does it have a system restore tool? There may be some remnants from VCD left causing the problem which a restore may fix.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Virtualclonedrive sounds suspiciously like the culprit. I'm not familiar with Vista but does it have a system restore tool? There may be some remnants from VCD left causing the problem which a restore may fix.

I did do a system restore and it didn't work, and now it's too late to try again. I'll check their forums, see if anyone experienced similliar.

 

[karym6]

Should be under system. You can also downlod process explorer from MS, should help you track down the problem.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

No log is being made. What am I looking for with process explorer? I can't see anything there.

Just to give you more information, when you goto the properties of the drive it says that the disc is 0B big and 0B used and has filesystem unknown. Is that normal for when there is no disc in the drive?

 

[karym6]

You want to watch what is happening as you try to access the drive. You are looking for something else that has possibly got hold of it.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Nothing changes really.

I also get this error in safe mode too. On process explorer if I run as administrator I get a different error.

I put in to run: E:\

And it came up with: "Unable to execute process. A device attached to the system is not functioning correctly."

So I don't know what that means.

 

[karym6]

DO you have two drives? If yes, do they both not work?

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

DO you have two drives? If yes, do they both not work?

Yes, two drives and both are giving exactly the same error and it started at exactly the same time too.

 

[karym6]

disconnect one and see if the other works, then do the same in reverse.

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

No luck. I'm going to run a Windows utility boot cd, see if that can see any issues.

UPDATE: Ok, so now this is totally weird. I ran the boot disc, it's a BartPE disc. It ran ok, but when I did a test on the other disc it said it encountered an error. So now I boot back into Vista, and the top drive is working, but the bottom one isn't.

This is so weird... So why all of a sudden is the top one working and not the bottom. The top one didnt work when I unplugged the bottom one either earlier, which is even stranger. :S


UPDATE 2: I unplugged the working drive, and put the one that wasn't working in the SATA socket that was working. Booted up, and although I don't get that error anymore, Vista doesn't recognise anything is in the drive. With both drives back plugged in, I get the old error again.

Does this mean that the second drive is broken? I can't imagine it is though. It was working before all this started happening.

 

[crashuk2k1]

Try this . it's worked many times for me.

Click on the start menu.
If this is a Vista machine in the search box type in “regedit” without the quotation marks.

Browse to this location.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11*CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

In the right panel you’ll see something along the lines of “UpperFilter” and “LowerFilter” you want to click on each “filter” key and hit delete. Click yes when it asks to confirm if you wish to delete the key.
Restart Windows.



please remember messing with your registry can seriously mess up your system . I take no responability for any damage done .

 

[karym6]

What do these values do?

 

[TheWakeUpCall]

Thank you but I already tried this Didn't make any difference.