Why does XP freeze up when reading a CD/DVD disc

[vulcanman]

I have a brand spanking new core 2 duo 2ghz machine ... but even that is of no use when it comes to making this a true multi-tasking environment.

Is it the bus that is locking up during the read process ?

BTW, the DVD drive is ATA ... and all my HDs are SATA.

 

[Peter]

Please take this troubleshooting question to the appropriate forum section. Thanks.

 

[vulcanman]

Actually, its not meant to be a troubleshooting question ... was hoping to get some technical insight into the reason why it happens. Thanks.

 

[irishScott]

Hmmm. For me, it takes a few seconds to read the disk/refresh explorer windows, but I think that's just the firmware identifying the disk. Never had an entire system freeze.

 

[Markbnj]

The simple (sort of) answer is that it's a bug, or at least a less-than-perfect design. The slightly longer answer is that from Windows point of view the CD is just another mounted volume. Mounted volumes can change at any time, so when you open Explorer, or take some other action that requires Windows to have a good and current picture of the state of that device, it asks the device. All the other devices repond right away, but the optical drive is sitting there without its disk spun up, and it says: heck, I have no idea, let me spin this disk up and see. A few seconds later it reports back with things that Windows needs to know, like volume size, file system, the current directory, etc., and Windows can finish repainting the Explorer window, or whatever it was doing.

I call it a bug, because the stack just doesn't take account of the nature of the optical drive, and provide some asynchronous way for Explorer to get on about its business. Actually that's not true... the stack does, but Explorer doesn't use it. Anyway, it's not likely to change for XP at this point, since it's just a minor inconvenience.

 

[bendixG15]

Originally posted by: Peter
Please take this troubleshooting question to the appropriate forum section. Thanks.

Agreed .....

 

[wwswimming]

does it still happen with Vista on a computer with 2 or more cores ?

 

[SunSamurai]

bendixG15 & Peter; Eat a dick. Im interested in the actual reasons this phenomenon occurs as well. The "appropriate forum section" will bullshit us by asking obvious questions like "is yer CD player master or slave?" "whats yer mobo?" because they don't have a damn clue.

It IS in the appropriate forum section.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: aeternitas
bendixG15 & Peter; Eat a dick. Im interested in the actual reasons this phenomenon occurs as well. The "appropriate forum section" will bullshit up but asking obvious questions likle "is yer CD player master or slave?" "whats yer mobo?" because they dont have a damn clue.

It IS in the appropriate forum section.

I agree. Keyboard courage is lose.

I don't know why this happens, but Microsoft has stated that Windows 7 will no longer do this.

 

[SunSamurai]

If you have a link Id like to see that.


I remember this type of thing happening on Apple computers before X as well.

 

[Peter]

Well, being a BIOS engineer in mainboard prototyping, I have plenty of answers. But, given the attitude, I don't quite feel like typing any. So, you've already proposed yourself a good alternate activity. You don't even need anyone to help if you're flexible.

 

[mruffin75]

Originally posted by: Peter
Well, being a BIOS engineer in mainboard prototyping, I have plenty of answers. But, given the attitude, I don't quite feel like typing any. So, you've already proposed yourself a good alternate activity. You don't even need anyone to help if you're flexible.

He asked a perfectly good question.. and no.. the mainboard/cpu/os forums aren't the best place to ask this, as the first "answer" he'll get will be "Wow dood..you need to upgrade to a C2D machine..then it'll rawk with 2,000fps in Quake!"..Unless the question is something about overclocking, then you won't get an intelligent answer..

If you don't feel like answering, fine...go right ahead... but just because the question doesn't contain anything about quantum physics/how many atoms are in a Big Mac/contemplating your navel, doesn't mean it's not highly technical...(and most of the questions asked here aren't really highly technical..it's more for people wanting to j*#k off about how smart they are..or aren't)..

As for Windows not responding, MarkBNJ has got it spot on... Explorer is most likely programmed to query the device and then wait for a response...which on HDD's and other fast mediums, this is pretty instantaneous, however with a CD drive you have to wait for it to spin up to read the disc.

Why does it have to stop responding while it waits? No idea...maybe sloppy coding from Microsoft? It wouldn't be the first time...

There...see how easy it is to answer a question??

 

[bobsmith1492]

It has to be something beyond just Explorer, though. I know it is because my machine will lock up upon a reboot fairly often and sit there, blank screen, with the DVD light on and the IDE activity/HDD light on. The DVD won't eject and the system won't restart until I power down manually with the PSU power switch. I'm pretty sure it is related?

 

[Peter]

If that happens, it's plain and simply not coming up out of reset. This will also hold the drive's eject button inoperable.

... and we're back into general "my PC doesn't turn on" troubleshooting, aren't we?

You're not seriously asking "why does spinning a disc up take time", are you? Power. Mass. Acceleration. Formula. While Explorer sits there waiting for things to happen, the machine doesn't "hang". Other tasks keep doing theirs, only the one window you're waiting for isn't "doing" anything.

If the machine does actually hang and crash when accessing a disc, then we're again back into troubleshooting - troubleshooting bad IDE cables, broken drives, power supply problems and damaged mainboards.

 

[mruffin75]

Originally posted by: bobsmith1492
It has to be something beyond just Explorer, though. I know it is because my machine will lock up upon a reboot fairly often and sit there, blank screen, with the DVD light on and the IDE activity/HDD light on. The DVD won't eject and the system won't restart until I power down manually with the PSU power switch. I'm pretty sure it is related?

No..it's not related...that's a problem with your PC... not what the OP was talking about..
You should take *that* to the PC troubleshooting forums...

 

[natto fire]

I'm sorry, but I think this belongs in the General Hardware forum as well. I think some of you are underestimating it, but then again, when you have noobs posting around telling Elite Members to "eat a dick" then yeah maybe they did drive away all the helpful people. The point is that nobody wants that to happen here, so if those types of attitudes could just stay in the other hardware forums and phrase their questions in a way that the simple responses could be avoided altogether, that would be nice.

It is a combination of Explorer searching for autorun, and the physics of starting the disc up itself. Try disabling autorun and see if it helps any.

FYI: Computer Help (which used to be called Technical Support) is not the same as General Hardware, even though people use GH as such.

 

[Markbnj]

It is a combination of Explorer searching for autorun, and the physics of starting the disc up itself. Try disabling autorun and see if it helps any.

Yeah, all that general sort of activity. I thought Explorer only looked for autorun on a media change event, though. Could be wrong about that. It's enough to note that the media has to be spun up and detected, because it might have changed since the last time Explorer looked at that part of the file system. Explorer could have been written to put a question mark there and come back later, but it wasn't. Is this behavior still in Vista?

As for the BIOS... Windows doesn't use the BIOS to handle int 13h, and hasn't for a long time. It directs all I/O calls through a native driver. Int 13h is out of it after the boot loader is read in.

On the subject of the appropriate forum. My approach, unless the violation is eggregious (i.e. question about packet shaping in the power supplies forum), is to just answer it, and maybe mention the other forum. The line is pretty blurry. A question about packet shaping might not be out of place in the home theater forum, for example, depending on the focus. In this case the OP's question was not so obviously out of place that he should have been told to take a hike. A mod can move it if they wish, but a mod has a more complete view of things than the average user.