Windows sees DVD drive, but not the disk

[Grump]

I built my own system (I've done this many times before) and thought I got a quality DVD combo drive - a Plextor sata - and used it to install Windows 7 Professional on my new machine. It was going fine and I last used the drive to install MS Office 2007 Professional's first disk. I restarted the computer and then wanted to install the bonus stuff on disk 2. Windows wouldn't access the disk.

I tried other disks, nothing. I looked in Windows Explorer and, sure enough, the drive was there, but didn't indicate it had a disk in it. I looked at Device Manager and, as usual, it reported the drive was working properly - even though it wasn't. And the drive was recognized in Disk Management and I was able to change the drive letter to V (I always rename the DVD to V).

My assumption was it was a bad drive. I got the royal run-around from Plextor tech support and the guy was very rude, so I opted to buy a new drive. It came yesterday, an Asus DRW-24B1ST. I'll be damned if it didn't have the same problem.

I have uninstalled the drive through Device Manager and physically, changed the sata port on my motherboard - I've got 6 ports and tried 5 of them (the 0 spot is taken by my HDD). No joy. I found a registry fix that I thought might work, but not. I did the fix routine on the Microsoft website and that didn't find anything.

This is driving me nuts. I'm too old for this anymore. I actually thought my last computer was going to be my last computer, but the doctor was wrong and I outlived it.

My mobo BIOS recognizes the drive. Windows recognizes the drive. But I couldn't play a video, listen to music or install a program from the drive to save my life. Surely I can't be the only one with a problem like this. But I can't find anything here, on Google or anywhere else to fix it.

Thanks for letting me be grumpy.

Jim

 

[Crunchy Doodle]

Sometimes Windows 7 can take several minutes to recognize a DVD or CD that's placed in a DVD drive. I find this quite annoying. Other times it's instant. When it didn't see the DVD you put in, did you allow several minutes (not seconds) for the disk to be recognized? This is made worse if your have more than one optical drive letter, or change the drive letter.

Bye.

 

[Grump]

Sometimes hours. I left disks in the drive for very long periods of time thinking I would be able to solve the problem and continue. I'd open Windows Explorer (or my favorite, Directory Opus) and try to view files on the disk, but the file manager would never be able to see a disk in the drive. I'd get an error message about putting a disk in the drive. Changing disks did nothing. Using the PlexUtilities was possible and the software could make the drive door open and close and it could do its thing, but it wouldn't play or run a disk.

When I got the first drive, the Plextor, I installed the utilities and Nero Essentials that came with it. I believe now that I installed Office before I installed the drive software because I was anxious to get my email back. It is when I installed the drive's software that it stopped working.

The Plextor software was still on my machine after I installed the new drive from Asus. Based on my experience from years back, I knew there was a possibility that Nero would know the Plextor was gone and would produce an error message if and when I could ever use the software. So, last night I uninstalled Nero and PlexUtilities.

This was about 5am this morning, actually - last night to me. Just before I decided to finally go to bed, I wanted to take the disk I had out of the drive before shutting the computer down. I hit the button and up pops a warning that there is no disk in the drive. Something recognized there was a disk in there, for crimony sakes. I opened the drive door again and put the disk back in. It started right up and asked me if I wanted to install the software.

AMAZING!

I am assuming it was either PlexUtilities or Nero Essentials that killed the drive. Now I am afraid to install the copy of Nero that came with the Asus drive. But it works. The drive works now.

On a side note... have you ever lived in Quincy? You look like a guy I'd see around town once in a while up here.

Thanks and sorry for the false alarm - except that now I wish I knew what software killed my drives.

Jim