Windows 7: 2 optical drives not working with Windows 7

Hi Guys

First post here so please allow me to make a few mistakes.

Right ill get straight to the point. I bought Windows 7 Professional today and I have installed the 64bit version. Nothing went wrong at all in the install process and its working fine apart from this little (BIG!) issue. Both my optical drives are not working correctly. I insert a disc and it spins up like normal. No autorun happens so I go to "Computer" and I can see that windows has recognised the disc is there as it says the amount of space of the disc and information like that. No name appears to replace the "DVD RW Drive" though. Now if I double left click on the drive that its in windows just sits and thinks forever and only when I eject the disc everything goes back to normal like nothings happened. Now if I right click I get the same result but as soon as I eject the disc the standard right click menu appears for the drive.

Any ideas?

I hope thats understandable to you all.

My specs are as follows:

Intel Q6600 (Stock)
TPower i45 Motherboard
4gb (2x2gb) Corsair RAM
ATI Radeon HD4870

My optical drives I have had for a few years now, one is a Lite-on DVD RW and the other is a LG DVD.

Anything more you need to know just ask.

Thanks



Scott

EDIT: just as a quick test I inserted a DVD and it seemed to see it was a "DVD" and opened the standard media application on windows but then it almosted stopped reading and didnt load anything. AHHH!

Hi SJMX,

Try the Windows 7 DVD, it worked during install, so you are sure it is ok.

See if that disk fails too, just to make sure it's not the disks.

It's possible that the lenses of the drives are dirty and need cleaning.

If that's the case you need to open the drives and locate the laser lens.
You can use alcohol on a cotton-stick to clean the lens.

Good luck.

I have tried to Windows 7 DVD in both. The LiteOn is just being the same but the LG booted up the DVD after a few grummbly noises. I then tried another disc and it didnt work.

Just as a side note, both drives work fine under XP when i have my XP hard drive plugged in instead.

A screenshot of when its trying to access the disc. I disconnected the LG drive for now to see if that had any effect at all. It just sits that like thinking until i open the disc drive and then it just says something along the lines of the drive not ready.

Just so you know, thats trying to read a Nero disc, as you can see it shows the disc "total size" and stuff like it can read it but then it doesnt.

Here is another tip, that sometimes works

Power down computer. Disconnect both optical drives & power cords to them.

Restart computer, load into windows, wait a few minutes, then shut down windows & computer. Re-Connect optical drives & power cords. Re-Boot computer & see if it finds the optical drives as new hardware & installs drivers

just tried your trick and it hasnt worked. thanks for trying though.

i have updated the drivers and everything for them and windows always says it has the latest drivers for them.

this is really getting to me now

Are these IDE or Sata ?

If IDE are they IDE0 or IDE1 ?

they are both IDE running on the same IDE cable.

can you quickly remind me how to check if they are IDE0 or IDE1 please?

If your boot hard drive is IDE, then it is most likely IDE0, & the opticals are on the second cable & IDE1

my hard drives are all SATA, the only IDE hardware in my PC is the optical drives.

can you explain why maybe the IDE types may be effecting me please?