Question from a reader:
hi Tony
can you help me please.
I have windows vista on a
and I have lost the use of my CD and CDRW,
every time I load a cd it tries to run but then ejects the CD and says please insert a CD . it will play a dvd .
TIME MACHINE 5200 .
I have tried several fix’s but none have worked
i.e.
uninstalled the drivers an reinstalled the drivers .
gone back 2 months to the earliest up dates ( that worked last time ) .
gone in to the system and delegated the upper and lower filters .
taken the hole system back to facture settings and reloaded window vista ( that has also worked but I keep losing them again and all my files )
can you help
This is an interesting problem, because it sounds like a software configuration issue, but the steps you’ve taken should have solved that. The fact that bringing your system back to factory settings fixes it temporarily makes it sound like some software you’re using is causing the problem.
Let’s run through a couple of quick configuration tests just to double-check:
1. Try different CDs, including commercial CDs (in other words, not CD-Rs that someone burned).
2. Disable autoplay so you can try to access the CD in different ways. These instructions are from Microsoft support, and assume you have the latest Vista updates installed. After following those steps, try to access the CD drive from Explorer. If that works, you can try to play music (if that’s what your doing) using a different app than you normally do, such as Windows Media Player (built into Windows) or Media Player Classic.
- Click Start, click Run, type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK.
- Locate and then click the following entry in the registry:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer\NoDriveTypeAutorun
- Right-click NoDriveTypeAutoRun, and then click Modify.
- In the Value data box, type 0xFF to disable all types of drives. Or, to selectively disable specific drives, use a different value as described in the “How to selectively disable specific Autorun features” section.
- Click OK, and then exit Registry Editor.
- Restart the computer.
3. Check the Properties dialog box for the DVD drive, and clear the Enable Digital Audio for this cd-rom device checkbox if it exists.
4. Look for the latest drivers for you CD-drive. I bet you’ve done this already, but look in Device Manager (devmgmt.msc) for the model name of your CD/DVD, and search for newer drivers on the Internet.
5. Uninstall any audio/music/video player software you’ve installed.
Hey, if none of this works and it is a hardware problem, don’t fret–CD/DVD drives are super cheap. Just buy a new one and swap it out.
