Win2k and unregonised CDRW registry help?

[Marshy]

Hi guys

Simply put, the CDRW is not detected in explorer or any other software (Nero etc)

However it is detected in BIOS & bootup,

I have the ASPI layers installed 4,60 (Force Apsi), with two host adapters detected.

In the registry under

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\\Adaptec\Adaptec Shared\CDEngine\Device Properties

the CDRW is present with various Dword entries, however not as many as the DVD which has several
FileSystemTest entries the CDRW has none of these.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\MountPoints\F
(F should be the CDRW drive letter!)

there is only
\ _Autorun
\ _dil

while the DVD has two additional ones \ _DriveFlags and \ _LabelFromReg

Is this the reason why the CDRW is not recoginised?
Does this make any sense to anyone?
Does anyone know how to edit the reg so i can use the CDRW?
Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks and hope someone somewhere can offer some guidence.
M.

 

[c0rv1d43]

Hi, Marshy.

I guess we'd better go about this stepwise.

I wish I had a Win2K box near me, but I'm on the road and not going to have access to one -- unless by accident -- for a few weeks. I'm stuck using WinXP Pro as a model for the moment, and these two operating systems are fundamentally different in the way they handle CD writers. If I am able, I'll try to be of some use.

First things first. We know the BIOS spots the drive at boot time. There's no reason to expect Windows 2000 to recognize the drive, intrinsically, as anything other than an ordinary CD-ROM drive. Since Windows Explorer isn't even assigning it a drive letter, I guess that Win2K isn't even seeing it as an ordinary CD-ROM drive.

So, the first step is to see if it's showing up in Device Manager. Right-click on My Computer, choose Properties from the context menu, and select the Hardware tab. Click the Device Manager button, and check out the DVD/CD ROM category to see whether or not the device is even listed, and whether or not the DM thinks the device is operating properly.

You should also include the exact make and model of your CD writer in your reply, since someone may be able to get information specific to the compatibility of that drive with the OS.

You should also apprise us of every bit of CD writing software (and their versions) that you've installed on this system. I'm probably going to wind up suggesting that you remove them all, rebooting after each installation, and then choose just one of them in trying to get the drive to work as a burner. But we have to just get it recognized as a drive first, so don't worry about reinstalling any of the burning software until we've accomplished that first important step.

Finally, it might be helpful to us to know the level at which your OS is patched. SP2?

I'll try to get back online to check for continuation of this thread as often as possible, but I'm sure others (probably more talented than I am) will be here to help out if I'm slow at getting back to you.

Regards,
Collin

 

[Marshy]

Cheers Colin

OK the first answer is , it is not present in the Device Manager only the DVD

The make and model is LG16/10/40X HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8160B 2.01
I have ezcd 5 installed at the mo and have uninstalled nero 5

I have sp2 installed and i think this problem arose when i was updating the system,

Among the other software i updated at that time was mediaplayer 7,1
as the one on the system causes lock up so i uninstalled the existing and then reinistalled, then bang no CDRW WTF?

So what have i done, and can you help, or do you know anybody in the A team!

 

[c0rv1d43]

<< OK the first answer is , it is not present in the Device Manager only the DVD

The make and model is LG16/10/40X HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8160B 2.01 >>



Okay. Well without this bit of the puzzle in place, there is no other place for us to go. We have to get this straightened out first. The listing you have given for your Hitachi CD writer is definitely listed in the Hardware Compatibility List as being Logo certified for use with both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. This means that we're looking at a problem with a) hardware, or b) Windows 2000 configuration on your system. Well, doh! I guess you already knew that, but sometimes it helps me to state the obvious!



The method I would suggest is to uninstall every last bit of CD writing software from that system. Reboot after each uninstall procedure. Check the Web sites of the vendors of each software package to see if you can find any data about removing the registry entries employed by their software. This may be particularly important to do for the ROXIO software (EZCD Creator / Direct CD). That software has, in at least some of its many iterations, made some extraordinarily ill-advised changes to Windows registry settings. In fact, the software is fully capable in some circumstances of completely borking a Win2K or WinXP OS. Were you aware of that, and did you take the proper precautions as now outlined (supposedly) on the ROXIO site when you installed the software?



<< I have sp2 installed and i think this problem arose when i was updating the system,

Among the other software i updated at that time was mediaplayer 7,1
as the one on the system causes lock up so i uninstalled the existing and then reinistalled, then bang no CDRW WTF? >>



So you are saying that this drive was burning properly and was showing up as a CD drive before you installed SP2? Or was it something else that caused the drive to stop working? Because I'm guessing that it's more likely that the addition of one or more of the CD writing software packages is what caused your issues.

Anyway, I think you should uninstall all of the CD writing software, including any that came with the writer. You need to rid your system entirely of this type of software, just to see if we can get the drive recognized first as a reader. Once the software is removed, go into Device Manager and remove the CD writer from the list. Then reboot to allow the writer to be redetected by Windows 2000. Check the Device Manager (and Windows Explorer) at this point to see if the drive shows up as a CD drive. If it does, we have something to work with. If it doesn't, we need to fix this behavior before fixing anything else is possible.

- Collin

 

[Dod]

Hi guys

I might be missing something but isnt that model of rewriter a LG?

I had a very similar problem with GCE 9160B and easy CD after setting up Win2K.

There is an update at easyCD website version 5.02 which lets easycd recognise the writer. BUT still think its worth following Collins advice first.

Dod

 

[Dod]

Sorry thats 8160B, same model
Dod

 

[Marshy]

Thanks for the help so far.

OK, Dod it is a LG CDRW

Collin, the CDRW was working fine until installing the updates of real player.
Following your advice, I went to EzCd (now Roxio) for help on removing registry entries.

so i uninstall czcd, and deleted all adaptec entries and renamed the folling files
Cdrtc.dll Cdral.dll Cdr4dll.dll Cdr4vsd.vxd Cdr4vsd.sys to .rox files

so that should all be gone from my s&yacute;stem

and there was a page titled CD-ROM disappeared in Windows 2000

open regedit and back up the registry
Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
under section 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-02002BE10318
delete the upper and lower filters
Restart
Your CD-ROMs should be back

Were they? Were they F#k!!:disgust:

I even followed the link to microsoft (artical Q270008) which tells you to do the same thing, EZCD changing the resistry

No luck

each time i have made any changes i have restarted the comp. but still no CDRW not in windows or the device manager

What have i missed?

I've even looked for all adaptec reg entries in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and deleted them

I've re-installed mediaplayer 7,1 again without the adatpec add on,

I will try installing CZCD latter again with the add ons as DOD said but if windows can't see it why should the software!

Well i post again latter sorry about the big reply and aswers some of the questions to the questions

Cheers M

 

[c0rv1d43]

<< Collin, the CDRW was working fine until installing the updates of real player.
Following your advice, I went to EzCd (now Roxio) for help on removing registry entries. >>



Okay, this is the first time you've mentioned Real Player. That's another major piece of horse hockey software, like the Roxio stuff. Win2K is not really a multi-media users dreamboat. If I were going to add all of that stuff to an NT-based OS, I'd go with WinXP. For one thing, it has driver rollback and system restore than can be a real lifesaver in a situation like yours. For another, it's just better built to accommodate multi-media software, from the standpoint of basic functioning AND from the standpoint of compatibility.

I don't think you should be adding anything to this system now. If anything, you should be removing every bit of third party multi-media stuff that you can remove. I think it's also possible that updating WMP may have been a bad idea, but I don't think you can do anything about that at this point. You really have to get the OS to see that there's a drive (of any kind) there before you stand a chance of burning with it. Like I said before, I think you need to deal with that first.

While we're on the topic of OS configuration, have you disabled Windows File Protection on this system? WFP should have protected you at least from bad software or device installation procedures making improper changes in the system file complement. The symptoms you're describing could be caused either by faulty registry configuration or by a file complement issue.

What IE version are you running, BTW? I've also seen a number of Win2K systems which ran into trouble when IE6 was installed on them. The bad behavior of those systems appeared to be related to the ORDER in which various parts of the system were updated, rather than a particular problem with any particular piece of software. I believe it may have had something to do with end users having installed IE6 before performing one of the service pack updates, but I'm darned if I'm certain about this memory. It didn't happen on any of the machines that I deal with directly, and the people who had this issue just decided to whack their systems and start over. So, as you can see, the history for determination of cause is not very good. It's just one more thing to consider as we cast about for a possible solution.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful at the moment.

- Collin

 

[Marshy]

Oops sorry ignore that statment about realplayer, i should have wrote mediaplayer

The machine has got IE6.0 installed but this has been running fine, since it was installed and i haven't touched it since.

Would there be any more registry entries i could delete so the CDRW will be redected?

M

 

[c0rv1d43]

Okay, I'm delighted that Real Player isn't on the list of suspects.

I'm afraid that I can't think of anything else, other than removing the nastiness that Roxio did to the registry and the file system. I'd be wary of the temptation to clip stuff out of the registry (without at least exporting it so that it can be imported back into the registry in case something else breaks). In the absence of specific advice from a software or device vendor to remove or edit registry items directly I'd avoid it -- in this case.

I'm sorry that I don't have access to a Win2K machine now so that we might compare notes. Looking at my WinXP Pro notebook won't be likely to do us any good at all. WinXP really does handle CD writing very differently than Win2K.

Did you say whether or not you have disabled WFP on this system? Also, have you ever had to perform a repair on the system (using the CD) since SP2 was applied? I'm trying to figure out if there could be a file complement issue.

BTW, I've never seen EasyCD Creator 5.x installed on a Win2K system before. It was my experience that 4.05 worked reasonably well on that OS. I would think that 5.x would be better, but who knows if they may have broken something for Win2K while they were trying to get 5.x from totally borking WinXP installs.

- Collin