Problem with a DVD/CD drive
Posted by admin on Jul 10th, 2006
I'd appreciate any advice about a problem I am having with my DVD/CD drive since I upgraded from XP to Vista Home Premium. MY desktop is an HP Pavillion a1250n with a "HP DVD Writer 740b ATA Device" according to the Device Manager.Everything worked like a charm under XP but once I upgraded to Vista I have had a strange problem with the drive. If I insert an audio CD I can play it and/or copy it to Itunes. I can also go into Windows Explorer and display the contents of the CD. If I insert a CD with photos or program files, Windows Explorer will freeze up if I try to display the contents. The lockup is so hard that I end up having to pull the plug on the machine in order to restart it. I have turned all autoplay options that I can find off. Vista tells me the drivers for the device are up to date and I cannot find anything newer on the HP site.Can anyone kindly offer me some advice on how to correct this? Thanks!Cheers, Stephen
Jul 12th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:02:47 0400, The Petries wrote: I spent a couple minutes on the web and found this document:h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00001838&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=&product=81685If this is your drive, (scroll pretty far down the page) and it is an internal IDE, fairly good change it may need a IDE controller upgrade. That is based on the MB or in the case of some name box the model number. You'll need to find that, then go to HP driver page and see if they released a new IDE controller than runs under Vista. While there see whatever if anything is offered in the way of driver updates for your HP a1250nI also found this page:h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=1127366&lang=en&docname=c00845986
Jul 17th, 2006 at 08:53 pm
Hi Adam,Thanks for your response. I had checked out those pages before but HP only points to XP for that drive and/or system. Vista is reporting that the driver (Microsoft) for the device is up to date.What do you mean by an "IDE controller upgrade"? Software? Hardware? Sorry, I'm just a user with enough knowledge to get myself into trouble but not enough to know when to stick with XP :)I would have expected that if drivers were a problem that the drive would be 100% out of commission. It seems odd to me at least that it can handle audio CD's but nothing else.Thanks again for your help.Cheers, StephenAdam Albright wrote:
Jul 19th, 2006 at 08:47 am
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:30:52 0400, The Petries wrote: Just a guess since you got a ATA device, they only run off the IDE controller, so just throwing the dice that upgrading the IDE controller (yep its downloadable software, if there is one S/b somehwere on the HP site) may fix the problem assuming HP has a Vista upgrade for your IDE controller for your particular model. Seems to be a growing list of vendors that aren't playing ball with Microsoft, Adobe, HP, Espon to name three big ones that aren't in any apparent hurry to rush out Vista drivers. Curious. You would think so, but you never know. Computers and reltated stuff can be strange beasts to tame. I had a external 1200 baud modem belching heavy black smoke once. That was a little scary. What you could try to is go to Device Manger find your DVD drive, disable whatever driver it there now, then reboot and Windows should "see new hardware" and reinstall the driver again. When you do this you aren't deleteing the file, it just unassociates the driver with the device, that's all. Sometimes just doing that fixes wierd problems because in effect what you do by doing that is likely change the order drivers and loaded at boot and perhaps their IRQ assignment. Like I said, computers can do strange things. ;)
Jul 23rd, 2006 at 11:02 am
Thanks Adam for that suggestion. Unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem. Sigh....I have noticed one other peculiarity about its behaviour that might shed some light on what is happening. If I insert a CD with a few folders and a small number of files in the root I can now see the root directory but if I start drilling down into directories with many files, it hangs up. Perhaps the reason it can handle audio CD's is because they tend not to have a great many files on them. Would the number of files be a clue to what is wrong? Grasping at straws perhaps but it is a very annoying problem.Cheers, Stephen Adam Albright wrote:
Jul 28th, 2006 at 03:22 pm
On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:15:36 0400, The Petries wrote: Sorry, so many things can go wrong hard to pin down. The usual cause of a CD or DVD (especially home brew variety) hanging up is the disc is damaged and probably wasn't successfully burned regardless if the application you used to burn it says it was or not. A typical sign is you start to see what's on the disc, then it takes way longer and often you can't eject the disc or whatever application or Windows itself hangs up. Aside from updating the controller you run it off of, does the drive/burner itself have any new firmware update? That's about all I can think of. If it is just one or two disc could be the media itself is bad. That's common.
Aug 2nd, 2006 at 10:00 am
Stephen,I have seen the same problem with my Dell XPS after upgrading from Windows XP to Vista Ultimate. I am still trying to determine what is going on and how to fix this problem. Any closer to solving the problem?
Aug 3rd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
On Mar 31, 6:57 pm, john_bart...@hotmail.com wrote: I have spent a grueling day pulling every Dell patch and flash for the hardware on my computer. I ran flash upgrades on both my DVD and DVD/ CD RW drive. I updated the drivers for my NVidia video cards, NForce raid drivers and the raid IDE/SIDE drivers. I pulled every other little software update Dell had on their support site for my model of desktop with Windows Vista. Nothing worked.Then I remembered the headache I had after the Windows Vista upgrade with the Roxio/Sonic DLA and DragtoDisc. Windows Vista kept poping up errors about "Program Compatibility Assistant, This Driver is blocked due to compatibility issues, Driver: Sonic Solutions DLA, Publisher: Sonic Solutions. So I had to uninstall the Sonic Solutions DLA. Of course Windows Vista blocked the uninstall and for some reason did not warn me before installation of the Sonic Solutions DLA incompatability problem and that you MUST uninstall Soninc Solutions DLA before upgrading to Windows Vista. So I looked on the Internet and found a Sonic forum where people where able to uninstall Sonic Solutions DLA using some freeware called SafeMSI.exe which allows you to boot into Safe Mode, run the SafeMSI which enables the Add/Remove Programs and you can safely remove the Sonic Solutions DLA. So, I thought my Sonic problems where over until I popped in my first audio CD and my machine locked up completely. After about 1015 minutes it would unlock and the audio CD was ripped and the songs available in Windows Media Player (I found this out during debugging because my computer is set to eject the audio CD after ripping a CD. Then I placed a DVD in the drive and it literally takes 510 minutes before you can see the DVD or access the DVD. And on occasion if I inserted a DVD that had data, video and audio it would cause my desktop to BSOD (bluescreenofdeath) with a references_by_pointer error. I did the usual, turn off all autoplay features but I still had all the problem (audio CD lockups, DVD not accessible and BSOD). For those wondering I had no problem with Windows XP, CD's or DVD's before. Now what do I do?Well, this morning I thought that if one Sonic application was causing incompatability issues then could the rest be causing me problems? So, I uninstalled all my Roxio and Sonic software in Safe Mode. After the reboot I am not having ANY problems. I had purchased Roxio's Suite version 8.0 less than a year ago, so it was their most recent version before Vista was introduced. Not only are they not providing patches for version 8.0 they told me to upgrade to version 9.0 for a wopping $100 plus shipping (minus the $30 upgrade rebate). I don't think so! I would have expected them to provide a better upgrade offer for those that have recently purchased Roxio's Suite version 8 and Windows Vista. I have lost all faith in Roxio and Sonic after this mess and the headaches it has cost me in time, money and piece of mind.So, if you have Roxio or Sonic products try uninstalling them. If it does not work you can always reinstall them. I have used them and have sworn by them since they provided the DLA and DragtoDisk back in 2002. Now I have no faith they will support users and they just want your money, not your loyalty.John