Win7 problem with CD/DVD writer

[Steltek]

Alright, I'm stumped with this one.

I have a pair of Acer Aspire 5252 V333 laptops bought on this past Black Friday for my nieces. They both work fine, but share a single problem: neither laptop can write a file to CD or DVD from any applications installed in Windows. Apparently, Windows 7 Home Premium has decided that the DVD-RW drives installed are read-only drives.

I know the drives work because the built-in software to create system restore discs was able to successfully write and verify the four recovery and driver DVDs without a hitch. Curiously, I've found that I can also right-click on a file in Explorer and use the "Send to" menu option to write it successfully to a CD/DVD. However, any attempt to write a CD/DVD from an installed application fails - several actually say there is no writeable drive in the system.

I've tried the Microsoft tools at their support site, but they say they don't find a problem to fix. I tried deleting the drive from Device Manager and letting Windows re-discover it, and also tried turning off DMA for the DVDRW drive. None of these things have thus far resolved the problem.

Any ideas on how to fix this? It has to be some sort of policy configuration SNAFU, but I'll be d&%#$! if I can seem to resolve it. Of course, Acer support has been worse than useless.

The drives installed in the machines are Pioneer model DVD-RW DVRTD10RS per Device Manager. The only security thus far installed is Avast free anti-virus together with the Windows firewall. Disabling both of them makes no difference with the issue.

Thanks in advance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You have to have Admin privileges to burn discs with other apps, in Windows, otherwise the burn programs don't detect a writer.

 

[Steltek]

You have to have Admin privileges to burn discs with other apps, in Windows, otherwise the burn programs don't detect a writer.

I appreciate the reply.

That was the first thing I thought of, but both laptops are configured with and running under user accounts with full admin rights. I even tried to right-click and run the burning software with escalated permissions as admin, but it doesn't help. Windows Media Player won't even burn a file.

I further tried booting one of the laptops using the "Disable driver signature enforcement" option from the Advanced Startup options, as well as deleting the UPPERFILTERS and LOWERFILTERS registry entries (a few things that were known to work with this problem on the Win7 RC) - however, neither resolves the problem in this instance.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sounds like a bad filter driver installed then.

 

[Steltek]

Sounds like a bad filter driver installed then.

Unfortunately, I tried deleting both upper/lower filter driver keys from the registry and it didn't help. The laptops had to go home tonight, so I'll have to try to get my sister to hook one up to her router so I can use TeamViewer to try and remove the filters again via remote access.