Empty optical drive indicates it has audio cd

[Acolberg1]

Hello,
I have a windows 7 64 bit computer with a Plextor blu ray DVD drive. When I start the pc or reboot, the drive indicates it has an audio cd in it even though it is empty. If I put a cd in it, it will not autoplay. If I then open the drive and close it, it will auto play from then on and no longer indicate it has an audio cd until I restart the pc. I have set the autoplay options all to ask me what to do and the optical drive has the latest firmware. I would appreciate any help with this.

 

[bassfisher6522]

If you have the latest driver/firmware updates for the drive, it could be that the drive itself is going bad. With out knowing the exact model number it's hard to check specifications and downloads needed.

 

[jumanji]

Welcome to SevenForums, Acolberg1.

Looks like you have a custom-built PC. Was it self-built or by a professional/vendor?

How old is your Plextor Bluray drive? More specifically is it still under warranty?

Is this problem there from the beginning or did it come up recently?

If it is there from the beginning, I am afraid, you have a faulty drive.

 

[Acolberg1]

I've checked the drive with Plex Utillities and it indicates there is nothing wrong with the drive. The drive is only about 2 weeks old. Originally the optical drive was the d: drive, but windows changed it to G: and added a system reserve and made that the d: drive.

 

[jumanji]

When you install Windows, a 100MB System Reserved partition is created(No drive letter is assigned). C will be your system drive and D will be your optical drive. Everything fits in.

But how come another System Reserved partition D ? What did you do? What about E and F?

Can you put out a screenshot of the Disk Management ?

 

[Acolberg1]

Hello,

The system made the 100MB system reserve, but it assigned it letter d:. My optical drive was d: and it was assigned letter g: I have 3 hard drives-c:, e:, and f:. The system reserve that d: presently is part of my third drive f:. By the way, my PC often reboots when I go into the internet (bugcheck code 278), though I'm not sure it has anything to do with this. I only mention it because you said the system reserve is not normally assigned a drive letter and if I remember correctly this whole thing with the letter reassignments happened after a reboot. Sorry, I don't know how to do a screen shot.

 

[Wordsworth]

Fixing this problem has been discussed here; follow gregrocker's instructions. Basically, you'll need to use Diskpart to mark the partitions correctly, then after changing your boot order in the BIOS to the optical drive, use the Windows 7 DVD repair console.

To take a screen shot: click the Start button, and in the Search box type snip; at the top under Programs you'll see Snipping Tool. You can take a screen shot of anything with it and save it to disk, then when posting use the Attachments button to upload.

 

[Acolberg1]

The attached is a copy of my disk management

 

[Acolberg1]

Just to explain the above, I did as suggested and copied my boot files to c:, then deleted the d: drive which had been called system reserved. Now I would like to change my optical drive back to d: (which may take care of the audio cd problem), but have not done so because I have several programs that normally use the optical drive (such as Cyberling Blu Ray Suite or Itunes, etc.) and I am not sure if they would work properly if they no longer saw the optical drive as g:. I would appreciate comments on this.

 

[Wordsworth]

Just so you understand, you no longer have a Reserved Partition which is okay, but it means you won't be able to use Bitlocker if you intend to do so; also if you ever need the Repair Console you can't press F8 at boot but instead you'll need to use the Windows 7 DVD to repair.

On the programs that use the optical drive, you should have under Preferences or some heading in the programs you use the option to select the drive that the program uses. Or you can just leave the optical drive as G: and change (in Disk Management, right click and select Change Drive Letter and Paths) the other drives to D, E, and F making Disk 1 into two partitions since it's large anyway. Having your optical drives come alphabetically after SSDs or HDDs is fine. You should clean up the unallocated space on Disk 2 as well.

 

[Acolberg1]

Thanks for the information. The reason I want to change the G: optical drive back to D: is because before it changed to G: it worked normally. Now, it indicates it has an audio CD in it when in fact it is empty and when I use it I have to load the CD then open and close the drive for it to work. But I seem to remember in years past that when I have changed the drive letter to the optical drive the programs that automatically use it no longer seemed to find the drive. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

 

[Wordsworth]

Programs have a default path they will look for, but again you can usually change it. Anyway, restart your computer in Safe Mode (press F8 while booting then select Safe Mode from the menu). Does the drive show a cd audio in it while in Safe Mode?

 

[Acolberg1]

Yes, it does.

 

[Wordsworth]

Then it is a problem between Windows and the drive, and not another driver or program playing havoc. Open Device Manager as Administrator (right-click Computer then select Manage if you are not logged in as Admin.) and see if there are any yellow flags for the DVD/CD ROM drives. If not then Windows does not see a problem. In that case I'd change the drive letter back to D: and change the drive the programs default to in their preferences, or re-install the programs if you must to see if that does solve the problem.

 

[Acolberg1]

I changed the drive letter and it still sees it having an audio CD. Also, I added another DVD drive in case there may be a problem with the drive itself and it says that the new one also has an audio CD in it though it's empty. I changed the drive letter for the new optical drive and it still said it had an audio CD. There are no yellow flags in device manager for either of the optical drives.

 

[Wordsworth]

You wouldn't happen to be kane860 on another board would you? You have the latest hardware going and there can be bugs that perhaps the latest BIOS and chipset drivers may resolve. If you have the latest installed then you may need to do more research with others who have your motherboard.

Edit: Nevermind on the question as I see you have a different CPU and graphics card.

 

[jumanji]

I am now thinking aloud whether a clean reinstall would help.

The OP should remove all the internal drives except the the one drive on which he wants to install.

He should also not connect any optical drive and install the OS from an USB pendrive.

I am assuming that the OP has the latest bios, correct chipset drivers and other device drivers and nothing is left to chance.

That is what I will do and with all that the optical drive when connected shows a CD present, well...................I will come back here.

 

[netbox]

before anything else try this fix first Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
download the fixit tool and run (follow the guide to fix it for you)
I suspect that your iTunes messed up the drive coz I experienced last week that my DVD drive no longer exists after i installed iTunes (I know weird things happens in windows sometimes) and I tried that fix, and yes it resolves.
after using the fix my iTunes displays when run that the driver of the dvd drive is corrupted (What? screw you itunes LOL) and I just ignore that notice when I run iTunes.

 

[Acolberg1]

Thanks Wordsworth for pointing Kane 860 out to me. I posted a reply to him today. He is having very similar issues, at least in the optical drive side, as I am. It leads me to believe that this is a Bios issue since this is a new MB. I coud connect the optical drives to the 6g Marvel connectors for now. I may be wrong, but I think that the issues with my f: drive may also be related to this.

 

[thenox]

I had the same issue, where an empty optical drive was showing as an audio cd, but the problem went away after I installed the latest Intel Rapid Storage drivers from Asus' site. The update to version 3.0.0.2003 solved that issue for me.