Strange DVD RW Drive Problems

[iceyJDP]

Any other knowledge about this problem?

[Orpatsiv]

Hello,

I work for Microsoft and am a Vista technician. The solution to this issue is quite simple:

- Click on Pearl (aka start)

- Type Device Manager in the Start Search field.

- When Device Manager loads then go down to the DVD/CD-ROM drives selection

- Right click on each drive in question then choose UNINSTALL

- Reboot your PC or click on the little icon just below the help (when you put your mouse over it, it should say 'scan for hardware changes'.

This SHOULD resolve your issue.

Note: If you have any DVD Burning software installed or iTunes or any OLD CD burning software this will cause unwanted issues also and a CLEAN BOOT might be necessary.

CLEAN BOOT

- Click on Pearl

- Type in Start Search "System Configuration"

- Click on the SERVICES tab

- Put a check mark into the 'Hide all Microsoft Service"

- Click DISABLE ALL

- Click APPLY

- Click the tab that says STARTUP

- Click DISABLE ALL

- Click APPLY

- Click OK

- Click RESTART (if it prompts you)

NOTE: This will turn off all 3rd party non-windows services and all startup applications IF there are no security programs blocking you from changing your startup environment. (Spysweeper will block you so it must be disabled before you do this)

NOTE: Only do this as a troubleshooting method and ensure you go to the GENERAL tab and select the NORMAL startup option when you are done.

*************

If this does not work remember that the CD or DVD ROM or RW is tied into your BIOS and it also has its own FIRMWARE. When you try to flash the BIOS using the Vista OS you will get an error message saying that you got the wrong model. Remember that the BIOS flash has nothing much to do with Vista directly as it is writing to the ROM of the device, thus if you were to either switch back to XP and try the BIOS Flash again or remove the drive and install it into another computer which has XP or 2000 installed then try the BIOS Flash again this might allow the installer to work proper and flash the BIOS properly.

NOTE: If you do it wrong the drive will be dead and will be a nice paper weight.

I hope this has been of assistance and I wish you all Good Luck.

[yook]

I have this same problem with my NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW drive. Ever since installing Vista, the drive recognizes anything you put in it as a blank disc. Strangely, it has been able to read some discs sometimes but the vast majority of the time it just spins up and dies, and when you click it in explorer it says it's blank. Right clicking the drive sometimes makes explorer freeze up for over five minutes. I cannot access the drive's data with any program whatsoever.

I don't think it has anything to do with the actual disc, because discs that have worked once or twice before, don't work later, etc.

I upgraded the firmware and tried uninstalling/reinstalling the device in Device Manager. I've tried it in safe mode as well. It didn't solve the problem.

I've also noticed that after doing that, rebooting the computer with a disc in the drive causes Vista to fail booting.

Burning works fine. I've been burning DVD's and threw a good amount of them away because I thought they were burning wrong, but turns out they burned fine and it was just Vista.

Anyone been able to resolve this?

Edited April 2, 2007 by yook

[spacesurfer]

I have a Samsung that I installed after installing Vista. I do not have any problems.

I don't understand the nature of the problem. The only person who described this problem is post #1 and everybody else said they have a similar problem but no one had clearly described the problem with screenshots.

[jashsayani]

Hi,

I am also having the same problem. After installing Vista Business my DVD RE has stopped functioning properly. All disks cant be read. When I insert disks and open them, It says "Prepare this blank disk". All disks are recognised as blank disks.

I am sure that its a Vista problem.

Can anyone help???

Mail me on jashsoft@gmail.com

Thanks!!!

[steve928]

Hello,

I'm reporting in with the same problem. I have a brand new Asus Z96J laptop with a TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L632D dual-layer DVD burner and any disk I put into it and try to browse using the Explorer, I get the "prepare this blank disk" dialog. (System came with Vista Home Premium pre-installed)

However, I can open up a command prompt, do "d:" and press Enter, and then do "dir" and press Enter and I can see all the files on the DVD.

Is this a new Vista security feature? I have to resort to msdos copy and xcopy to read optical disks? I discovered this problem while trying to resolve a different issue: not being able to burn dual layer disks. (This right after fixing the problem with the ACPI Lid driver where my display would remain black if I closed and reopened the lid.)

Finally I installed Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5 and it was able to successfully burn *AND VERIFY* a dual-layer disk with over 7Gigs of stuff burnt onto it. Imagine my surprise when I eject and reload the disk to get the message "prepare this blank disk"... fortunately I was able to verify on a separate computer that it burned successfully and the problem is related to Vista.

Hope this helped someone out there

-Steve.

[dansouza]

Vista altered my drive somehow. I don't know how but I know it did. I installed Vista from the DVD on a blank HD. I played with it for a few days and decided I didn't like it and tried to put XP back on there. The computer won't boot from the CD with anything but a genuine Microsoft CD.

I get the error:

CDBOOT: Unable to boot from CD - Code 4

I then went to my other machine and burned another CD this time using a CD-R instead of RW, figuring that might be the problem. Same thing. It only worked with the original Vista DVD or the original XP CD right out of the box. Microsoft is trying to pull a fast one.

Well, I have egg on my face. My apologies to all of you Microsoft folks. I found the culprit and it wasn't Vista. It's Nero. I downloaded and installed the new Nero 7 Ultra version 7.5.8.0. I was making the CD's exactly the same as i always did, but for some reason they're not coming out bootable. I uninstalled it and reinstalled version 7.0.0.0 which is my original. Worked like a charm. The CD's / DVD's are coming out bootable.

Edited April 9, 2007 by dansouza

[drumgod1]

Hello,

I work for Microsoft and am a Vista technician. The solution to this issue is quite simple:

- Click on Pearl (aka start)

- Type Device Manager in the Start Search field.

- When Device Manager loads then go down to the DVD/CD-ROM drives selection

- Right click on each drive in question then choose UNINSTALL

- Reboot your PC or click on the little icon just below the help (when you put your mouse over it, it should say 'scan for hardware changes'.

This SHOULD resolve your issue.

Note: If you have any DVD Burning software installed or iTunes or any OLD CD burning software this will cause unwanted issues also and a CLEAN BOOT might be necessary.

CLEAN BOOT

- Click on Pearl

- Type in Start Search "System Configuration"

- Click on the SERVICES tab

- Put a check mark into the 'Hide all Microsoft Service"

- Click DISABLE ALL

- Click APPLY

- Click the tab that says STARTUP

- Click DISABLE ALL

- Click APPLY

- Click OK

- Click RESTART (if it prompts you)

NOTE: This will turn off all 3rd party non-windows services and all startup applications IF there are no security programs blocking you from changing your startup environment. (Spysweeper will block you so it must be disabled before you do this)

NOTE: Only do this as a troubleshooting method and ensure you go to the GENERAL tab and select the NORMAL startup option when you are done.

*************

If this does not work remember that the CD or DVD ROM or RW is tied into your BIOS and it also has its own FIRMWARE. When you try to flash the BIOS using the Vista OS you will get an error message saying that you got the wrong model. Remember that the BIOS flash has nothing much to do with Vista directly as it is writing to the ROM of the device, thus if you were to either switch back to XP and try the BIOS Flash again or remove the drive and install it into another computer which has XP or 2000 installed then try the BIOS Flash again this might allow the installer to work proper and flash the BIOS properly.

NOTE: If you do it wrong the drive will be dead and will be a nice paper weight.

I hope this has been of assistance and I wish you all Good Luck.

Yeah, the first part of the solution didn't work. If I boot the computer with a cd or dvd in the drive (not booting from it, of course), it reads the disc fine. I can switch out different cds/dvds with no issues. But, if I boot without anything in the drive, I get the "Prepare this blank disc" error when Vista comes up. I originally had Vista Ultimate on my laptop and never had this problem, but I had to downgrade to Vista Business for my companies licensing server. There is someone else at my company who has the same situation/problem. From all of the problems listed, and all of the different hardware that it has affected, it sounds to me like a Vista problem and not a hardware issue. Just my $.02.

Mike

[ZellSF]

I heard on teh internets that outdated software setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/cdrom/AutoRun to 0 can cause this issue. If that's the case, it can be fixed by setting it to 1 again.

I know, autorun shouldn't have anything to do with Vista recognizing full CDs as empty ones at all, but it seems to work here.

I have no idea why I registered just to post this.

Edited May 30, 2007 by ZellSF

[mynamehere]

I heard on teh internets that outdated software setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/cdrom/AutoRun to 0 can cause this issue. If that's the case, it can be fixed by setting it to 1 again.

I know, autorun shouldn't have anything to do with Vista recognizing full CDs as empty ones at all, but it seems to work here.

I have no idea why I registered just to post this.

This worked

Thanks

[Prashant S]

i think this the problem with the DVD-RW drivers. Just try to install the latest drivers for DVD Drive

[pbrommer]

I had the most up-to-date drivers, and changing the autorun in the registry to "1" finally fixed this problem for me too! Thanks so much for your help, ZellSF.

I've got a Lenovo Thinkpad z60t with the mats***a dvd-ram uj-832 drive

[Philip Buckley]

I run a vista system and I have been pulling my hair out for months over this drive issue and spent ages trying to work out why my CD/DVD drives wont recognise discs with data on them. It was so simple just to make that slight adjustment to the registry 0 to 1 and it really has solved the whole problem for me. So don't go making elaborate changes, firmware installations or taking the drastic step of buying new drives just follow the earlier very very good advise and tweak the registry.

[GordyBoy07]

I have a Samsung that I installed after installing Vista. I do not have any problems.

I don't understand the nature of the problem. The only person who described this problem is post #1 and everybody else said they have a similar problem but no one had clearly described the problem with screenshots.

The issue happens when you try to read a disc in the dvd/cd player. Even though it is a good disk you get a popup box like shown below (I hope the picture is there. This is a random problem and appears and disappears. I have found that if you go to My Computer and right click and pick eject and then close the drawer, the disc is readable again but when you have to do a two disk install it may fail on the second disk and that is a real pain in the you know what.

[Tripredacus]

We have encountered this problem also. There are two solutions we use.

1. Replace the CD Drive cable

2. Install the Chipset or SMBus drivers for the motherboard/controller instead of using the generic Vista ones.