Vista no longer likes CDs or DVDs...

**Gumby** · 10-18-08, 01:30 AM

Ok, in all my years of working on computers, I have never seen anything like this.

Windows Vista, on my wife's laptop refuses to read files from CDs or DVDs.
The disk spins up, but no files are ever shown. It does this on burned CDs and real commercial ones as well.
Device manager and BIOS all show no issues and detect the CD drive and controller just fine.
I uninstalled the drive from device manager and rebooted and it detected and installed just like normal
I ran a complete virus/malware scan and came up empty.
It also does this from Safe Mode

I know that this is not a hardware issue for two reasons:
1. I can boot to bootable CDs. I verified this with BartPE and a Windows XP CD. When I booted to Bart, everything worked and I could read files just fine from the CD
2. It will not even read ISOs from the virtual drives either. Both Virtual drives and real drives behave the same if you try and read files from them. It did this even after I re-installed the virtual drive software. (Alcohol 120%). It will let me mount the ISO file, but it says it is empty on any ISO that I use, that I know works just fine.

I researched this and came up empty. Any ideas?

**DJ Ms. White** · 10-18-08, 03:04 AM

I was going to say hardware, but it's not apparently. Will look into this more tomorrow. I think I need to sleep.

**RhysJD3** · 10-19-08, 01:52 AM

I know I've run into this with some virus scanners and Roxio. They have a patch for doing something odd with the upper and lower filters. RXfilter something or other. If you don't have roxio, not sure what the issue might be.

**Saltspring** · 10-19-08, 02:15 AM

Remove the drivers for the cd drive and find a new set on the internet or a cd. What has probably happened is the driver windows is trying to load up has been corrupted, I had this happen with my sound card once the computer thought it was there and working fine but the card didn't work.

**JimboIncinerator** · 10-19-08, 12:06 PM

Hmm interesting, Is there by chance a firmware update for your dvd rom? If so update it, which may make vista recognize it correctly. I concur its not a hardware failure if you can boot off the dvd-rom.

It could also be a driver thing (as mentioned by salt), if its using a default windows driver for it that may be the culprit.

**Gumby** · 10-21-08, 09:34 AM

if it is a driver thing, why would it affect virtual CD drives?
I will look into the roxio issue.

edit No good, she is using Nero for burning chores.

**RhysJD3** · 10-21-08, 08:47 PM

I had a virus scanner that would lock the CD/DVD drive when scanning. Sometimes would require a reboot for it to release the drive for use.

**Gumby** · 10-29-08, 04:32 PM

This issue is fixed (by me, with no research)

System File Checker did the trick.

I noticed that it was in fact recognizing the disks, it was just seeing everything as a blank DVD-RW.
So I thought it may be an issue with the windows cd mastering software. So I was going to see if that could be
removed and re-installed. But the windows components checklist dialog box was totally blank.
So I ran SFC /checknow and after that plus a reboot, all is well on the disk reading stuff.

Thanks to all that tried to help.

Stupid Vista...