DVD-rwRom icon switches to CDrom with any disk but does not play!

Alright here’s my problem. Every time I instert a cd/dvd/what have you my DVDrw-rom drives icon switches to a CDrom icon. The disk neither auto-plays nor if you open it can you see any files or information but the disk does spin up you can hear the drive working pretty hard but get nothing. Also if you looking at the details about the disk... is says that there is 0space 0 total size. This drive was working fine days before. I have SerialRaided (is that how its spelled?) striped hard drives. Windows XP. 3200+ AMD Athlon 64 and 2gigs of ram.

To fix
1. I tried removeing and reinstalling the device, and its driver. I also updated drivers for both device, the burning software, and also the bios. Even making sure to go back and remove all (I think) registry entries I did have a list of what to remove.

2. Thinking that this was just a bad drive, I replaced it with a new one and had the same problems. I again tried updating the drives and software. I couldn’t even use the disk that came with the new drive.

3. Seeing as both drives had the same problem I replaced the IDE cable on original computer with no luck, also I tried switching to the other open IDE slot. I checked the IDE channel itself to see if the mother board dropped it by placing a spare hard drive on the cable(this was suggest by the motherboard company GIGAbyte) I could read files and open music from this hard drive so the channel is working.

4. On the off chance that for some reason both drives maybe broken in the same manner I placed both in an older slower computer that also had XP with service pack 2 and had no problems with either.


Any Suggestion?

Welcome to Windrivers ChopperDoc27

You seem pretty confident, so I am going to chuck every question at you that I can think of that hasn't been mentioned in your post :)

What burning software are you using?

What dvd playing software are you using?


My computer, right click the dvd drive - properties - recording tab - is this enabled or disabled?

Is service pack 2 loaded? (your older machine states sp2, but you didn't say about the one with the problem)

Is the ide cable 40 wire or 80 wire?

Is udma enabled in bios for the ide channel supporting the dvd drives?

about udma and how to check it in windows XP

Have you checked the aspi layer? how to here

Have you loaded the motherboard drivers?

Have you always run two drives... have you tried disconnecting just one drive and working with the other for the moment?

Do you have any virtual drive software?

Is there any error codes for the drive properties in device manager?

Have you looked at the sticky at the top of the cd/dvd forum?

What burning software are you using? Nero 7
What dvd playing software are you using? Default currently as its not even playing store bought music cds

recording tab is this enabled or disabled? enabled

Is service pack 2 loaded? (your older machine states sp2, but you didn't say about the one with the problem) yes this also has sp2 loaded, since it was released

Is the ide cable 40 wire or 80 wire? 80
Is udma enabled in bios for the ide channel supporting the dvd drives? yes
about udma and how to check it in windows XP (http://www.blackmaxpc.com/Guides/Enable_DMA.htm) as far as I can tell it is. But I don’t see these files in the Registry... problem?
Have you checked the aspi layer? how to here (http://aspi.radified.com/) the utility says nothings installed... I don’t know much about this area... perhaps you could go into some detail?
Have you loaded the motherboard drivers? Yes
Have you always run two drives... have you tried disconnecting just one drive and working with the other for the moment? Only using one drive... I bought the second as I thought the first was broken, and I have only one installed at a time, both are have the same problems though.
Do you have any virtual drive software? Yes alcohol but its uninstalled.

Is there any error codes for the drive properties in device manager? No, no error codes.
Have you looked at the sticky at the top of the cd/dvd forum? Yes I have tried a few of the ideas there.

OK, aspi could be thought of as a type of driver. In Nero 7 there is an information tool which will report on the Nero aspi layer and the windows aspi layer - what does Nero say about both?

Disable the recording tab on the drive and reboot. Does the aspi report change?