DVD Burner problem

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 23 Mar 2008 3:44 pm

Device manager says it is working properly, no yellow flags noting anything wrong with my burner but it does not recognize any disks I put in, it will neither play nor burn anything.
I have windows media player, real player, and Itunes installed.
Any ideas of what is causing this?

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 23 Mar 2008 3:50 pm

1st step. Uninstall the drive in the Device Manager, restart Windows and it will be detected and reinstalled. Fixes about 99% of the problems with drives.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 24 Mar 2008 10:12 pm

Thanks Jack, I tried that but it didn't work. My burner is a built in LiteOn LTN487T. I uninstaled 2x and restarted, tried to update, roll back, etc. still doesn't recognize any type of disk. Also went to LiteOn site but it was no help. The unit is not even listed on their support pages.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 25 Mar 2008 2:28 am

It's not unusual for an OEM drive to not be listed on a Vendor's site.

Can you access the drive and the contents of whatever CD or DVD you have on there through the Windows Explorer (access the drive letter in Explorer) and list what is on the CD or DVD?

Another thought if you are trying to play a music CD or video DVD, is it just that the autoplay function is not working?

I'm surprised that the Uninstall/Reinstall didn't take care of it as it usually cures this type of problem.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 27 Mar 2008 2:55 am

Jack, I just went thru the entire process again just to be certain I didn't miss anything.
I have two disk drives, a dvd/rw (drive D) and a cdrom (E).
The cdrom works fine, it is set to default, asks what I want when I load it.
The dvd/rw is set and reset the same way but after I load it and the little cd curser icon flahes a couple times, it just stops, & the light goes out.
I cannot access the contents or force it to auto-run.
Any other ideas?
According to the device manager this thing is working properly.
I have a spare dvd/rw from another PC that I can swap it out with.

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 27 Mar 2008 3:27 am

Bo , has it ever worked?

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 27 Mar 2008 3:34 am

good question... yes it worked when I first got the PC

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 27 Mar 2008 3:38 am

Bo , can you see the drive . Start/ My Computer

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 27 Mar 2008 3:55 am

yes.. it shows up as my D drive it gets power, the light come on , the cd icon flashes , then nothing

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 27 Mar 2008 4:01 am

Bo, try this..
Create a text file with NOTEPAD and copy and paste containing the following data exactly as below and SAVE AS FIXCD.REG to your desktop.

You should see 3 boxes on the bottom in NOTEPAD before you ok it to be saved.
1)Filename : fixcd.reg
2)Save as type: all files
3)Encoding: ANSI

If you do not change it from txt type to All files type, then the file will actually be fixcd.reg.txt, this won't accomplish
the desired result

Double click on the FixCD file you just created from off your desktop and say yes to the merge

Bent Romnes · Post by **Bent Romnes** » 27 Mar 2008 3:55 pm

Maybe I will just confuse things by saying this, but during my computer woes a while back, my son-in-law computer wiz went into BIOS and set up everything there.
Can't give a step-by -step thing but it was done in 30 seconds. You need to be familiar with BIOS though. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than me can explain.

Andy Sandoval · Post by **Andy Sandoval** » 27 Mar 2008 10:34 pm

Bo, have you tried a laser lens cleaner disk? Sometimes it's all you need.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 28 Mar 2008 2:21 am

I've never seen the "lens cleaner" fix a PC disc drive. They don't get "dirty".

Although this is set up for Dell systems, some of it applies to any PC and disc drive problems. Click me

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 28 Mar 2008 3:11 am

Bo, this should sort it...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/EN-US/

Andy Sandoval · Post by **Andy Sandoval** » 28 Mar 2008 10:09 am

Jack Stoner wrote:I've never seen the "lens cleaner" fix a PC disc drive. They don't get "dirty".

But they sure work if the lens in a DVD Burner won't read the disk because of dust on the lens. Isn't that what Bo's talkin about???

Jon Light (deceased) · Post by **Jon Light (deceased)** » 28 Mar 2008 10:22 am

Sounds to me like a nearly identical problem I've got (and had for quite a while----never found a solution---) on my Dell xp rig. I've got a cd/dvd player and a cd burner. My player doesn't work. The burner does (and can play cds).
The system says everything is working properly. I can right click on the drive (D) in 'My Computer' and eject the tray via the menu. But if I right click "open" with a cd in the tray (or double click or explore or any other means of making something happen) a pop-up instructs me to insert a cd. I have tried numerous things including uninstall/reinstall reboot etc. But I'm stumped.

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 28 Mar 2008 2:27 pm

John R , the reg edit you gave me gives me a error mesg.. specified file is not a reg script/ can only import binary files.

the links to ms does not cover my symptoms so far it is not working.
I think a swap out of dvr is in order when I get back home sunday .

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 28 Mar 2008 2:59 pm

Andy,

I don't read anything that Bo has posted that would suggest the laser lens is "dirty" or "dusty".

An optical drive in a desktop PC isn't "open" like they are in laptop drives, many boom boxes and other CD players where they can get dust, finger prints, etc.

I've been on the Dell users forum for over 5 years and so far on the Desktop section of the forum there has not been one recorded case where the lens was "dirty" or "dusty". If there was a problem with an optical drive it was something else. Before that I was on the Compaq support forum and before that, before I retired, I managed a PC hardware help desk and don't recall a problem that a lens cleaner would have fixed.

John Roche · Post by **John Roche** » 28 Mar 2008 3:48 pm

BO , do you have Nero or another program like it, uninstall it or them , they can cause your problem..JR

Bo Borland · Post by **Bo Borland** » 28 Mar 2008 5:15 pm

I uninstalled anything else like NERO, ROXIO, etc.. currently Windows Media Player and Realplayer are in here.
Most of the music files are saved as MP3 ,, but it seems that my better half has downloaded thru Realplayer and the files look strange with M4A file extensions.
It appears that all my Itunes files are ok.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 29 Mar 2008 2:20 am

I agree that a program could be causing it. I worked on a customer's PC that had a problem like yours and it turned out one of the CD burning programs (Roxio) was causing the problem. As soon as i uninstalled it and restarted the PC the problem was gone (you can't just uninstall a program and see if it fixed it - you have to uninstall and then restart the PC). After the problem was resolved I reinstalled Roxio and it was still OK. But it was a hassle to completely uninstall Roxio as I uninstalled it with the Windows XP uninstall feature and restarted but there were still fragments of Roxio left and I had to use the Roxio "clean out" utility roxizap.exe to get Roxio completely out.

iTunes and RealPlayer are also two media players that can cause problems. If you have two packet writing programs (e.g. Nero InCd, Sonic DLA or Roxio Direct CD or the newer Drag to Disc) it can cause conflicts and problems. You can only have one packet writing program running (I personally do not use packet writing programs so I don't have any installed). You can also try disabling the built in Windows CD burning and see if that helps as it has been known to cause CD burning conflicts.

There is an Upper/Lower filter issue in XP (and it looks like in Vista too) but that is generally associated with the drives not showing up at all.