DVD/CD Drives Not Functioning

[Stabgotham]

My father-in-law has a very strange problem. He has a Samsung CD+R/RW (SW-248F) and a Memorex DVD+-RAM (530L v1). He has been using both for quite sometime without issue. Just this last week, both suddenly were no longer being recognized by Windows XP. In the device manager, both peripherals have a device status that states:

"Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)"

Unfortunately, we have been unable to locate drivers for these two devices. I have clicked on "Uninstall Driver" for both, rebooted, and still nothing. I've disabled one and rebooted. Nothing. I'm not really sure what to do. Neither the Samsung or Memorex website provide the necessary drivers.

Can anyone help us out with his dilemma?

 

[corkyg]

Yeah - this has happened to many including me. I found the easiest fix is a Registry edit as follows:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
CurrentControlSet
Control
Class
{4D36E965-E325 -11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Once you have opened the last folder, you should see two keys on the right hand side ("Upperfilters" and "Lowerfilters") which you may select and then delete by right clicking and selecting "Delete".

Alternatively, you could search for these keys instead of manually navigating to their locations. To do so, go Edit>Find and type either "Upperfilters" or "Lowerfilters" in the search field.

There is a Microsoft KB on the subject, 320553.

 

[Stabgotham]

Well that worked partially. The drives now show up under My Computer, but upon every reboot, we are prompted that new hardware is found. Oddly enough, the CD drive works even with this prompt coming up, but the DVD drive doesn't work. The DVD drive is acting very strange. In My Computer it comes up as a CD Drive and it will open discs so we can explore them, but will not run any applications off of them.

I'm not sure what to do next.

 

[corkyg]

Why not try switching the drive connectors? Are they internal or external?

 

[Stabgotham]

They are internal drives.