Pioneer DVR-215 DVD drive not useable on new W7 install  

Hi nzmike and welcome to the forum!

Is this a clean install or an upgrade install?

Cheers

Personally, I'd go for a clean install. Less headache, easier to isolate and troubleshoot problems if they do occur.

I'd like to check with your first before offering any suggestion on how to go about resolving your issues. The symptoms you've described rarely occurs on clean installations as these are bourne out of registry entries carried over from the previous installation(s) or corrupted registry entries. If you want to try and resolve this issue, I've outline the steps you need to do to try and resolve the issue;

Go to device manager and uninstall the CD/DVD drive
Press Win+R and type regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
Locate the entry {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
On the right side, locate the entry UpperFilters and delete it
locate the entry LowerFilters and delete that as well
Close regedit
Restart

Upon restart, windows will automatically install the driver for your CD/DVD ROM device. Verify results of the operation in device manager.

Note: If you find multiple entries of {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}, you might want to go through each and every one to make sure that the upper and lower filter entries are removed. You must make sure that you are in the appropriate registry subkey before deleting the UpperFilters and the LowerFilters values. To verify this, make sure that the Default data value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class data value is CDROM.

Important: if you've installed any 3rd party burning software like Nero, PowerISO, etc. they would need to be re-installed after these steps.


Let us know how it turns out

nzmike said:

Thanks again for the help - it's much appreciated.

So, after a bit of googling since my last post I found that page on MS you referred to and deleted the lower filter from that entry, but there was no upper filter and, according to the page on the MS site, if that is the case then the registry change won't work. However, I rebooted anyway and when W7 restarted the DVD drive was there and could be used and no longer has the warning in device manager.

You're most welcome!

As you'll discover, not all M$ documented steps are 100% accurate
Sometimes only one filter really is present in that key, as you encountered.

nzmike said:

To be honest though I think a clean install is on the cards anyway as I've just had too many problems with W7 since I upgraded. Another problem I have is that I can't add any folders from my DNS-323 NAS drive to the media libraries or to Media Centre - apparently because W7 won't add files from network shares as they aren't indexed. However, after I built my HTPC from scratch with W7 it allows me to do that just fine... so for me the upgrade has really not worked. I shouldn't be surprised I guess - they never seem to!

Good for you and you'll do a clean install. I'm sure that after the clean install, you'd have a much easier time fixing issues.

Cheers

nzmike said:

I wish I didn't have to do the clean install as I have loads of apps and .Net/SQL development stuff I'll have to set up again, not to mention battling with IIS7 (what *did* MS do with IIS6 to make IIS7 so terrible?!?!?) to get my web sites and testing stuff set up again.

Anyway, for now things appear stable so the rebuild will have to wait for the next rainy weekend day I think.

There are two things to look in to just in case;

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker - scans the integrity of all protected Windows 7 system files and replaces incorrect corrupted, changed, or damaged versions with the correct versions if possible.

Repair Install - This will show you how to do a repair upgrade install to fix your currently installed Windows 7 and preserve your user accounts, data, programs, and system drivers. I'm not sure how this will behave on a system that has gone through an upgrade install process, so back up your data first or make an image of the partition before attempting this, it just might be the one you need

Note: Please read through the tutorials thoroughly noting its effects on your system.

nzmike said:

On a slightly different note (and perhaps I should post this as a new topic) I am really not keen on the new task bar... I like my quick launch apps to the left in their own section and my open apps in the main task bar area - is there any way to switch this off? I tried properties but there doesn't seem to be anything there... as much I hate Vista (oh, how I hate Vista!) I am so used to having my taskbar the way I want it I'm finding the W7 way is just not suitable for me.

Cheers,

I like the vista task bar myself so I know what you mean. You can just go an unpin all the items in your current task bar and make it look like the vista one. Although, I must admit, I've given the Windows 7 taskbar a chance and it sorta grows on you. I've also noticed that it did reduce the times I click on Start :)

I think maybe this will help you out to bring back Quick Launch;

Quick Launch - Enable or Disable - By default Quick Launch is disabled in Windows 7. This will show you how to enable or disable Quick Launch on the taskbar in Windows 7 as a toolbar with small or large icons

Some other useful Taskbar stuff;

Taskbar Button Grouping - Enable or Disable

Taskbar - Pin or Unpin Program Links - within this tutorial, there are numerous links to other taskbar setting you might want to tinker with

Cheers

nzmike said:

Wow... thanks again - you get a gold star for being so helpful!

I will check out those links a bit later - am meant to be working right now but not getting a lot done between mucking around with W7 and getting OS-X going on my new MSI Wind netbook (which rocks!!).

LOL! :) You're most welcome!

I see you really have your plate full

nzmike said:

On Vista and XP I tend to have all the apps I use all the time in my quick launch area and I guess I just like them all there together instead of having to search along the task bar to see where one might be... so I will revert it back I think and see how I like it. On my HTPC where I use very few apps (and always the same ones) I really like the new task bar but for a heavily used dev machine I find it a bit clunky (though I do like the context menus above each icon!)

Yes, having all the programs visually mapped on the task bar really is very helpful as it doesn't distract you from your flow when you're working on something. I tend to adjust my desktop environment depending on the type of work I do but yes, I usually have most of my top program in quick launch as well.

nzmike said:

So far, I am really impressed with W7 - I've even let the UAC stay on since it now no longer pops up every 6 1/2 seconds to ask some ridiculously inane question! (Though I like the option to have it there on different settings - I put it down to low and there it shall stay.)

Hopefully, we'll see a much better Windows 7 come April when they release their RTM version. I'd suggest at minimum to let UAC sit at default at the very least. Turning it off is posses a security risk. But hey, if you've setup your system with good AV and Firewall, and inside a domain, it wouldn't be so worrisome.