Weird CD-ROM behavior

[ddrueding]

When a cd is inserted into either the cd-rw or dvd-rom of this machine, no files are displayed in explorer. When you select an empty drive, it prompts you to insert a disc (proper behavior) But if there is a disk in the drive, there is no prompt, just no files. In device manager the drives appear as usual. In disk management the drives appear as well. When a disc is inserted in the drive, the disk's capacity is accurately represented in disk management. In Dos, either drive (empty or full) can be switched to and "dir" ran with the same (empty) results. It looks something like this:

c:\> cd d:
d:\> dir

d:\> cd e:
e:\>dir

e:\>

Both drives behave the same way.

OS is Windows XP Home
Latest updates, etc.

Help?

 

[Fushigi]

Do they suddenly appear if the PC is rebooted? My laptop does that on occasion.

 

[ddrueding]

nope, no number of reboots fixes the issue. I'm pouring through pages of knowledgebase articles, but no love yet....

I doubt it is a hardware issue as both drives exhibit the exact same behavior.

 

[ddrueding]

Just to clarify:

The drives are there all the time, it just won't allow me to view the contents of the drive.

 

[Fushigi]

Hmm. Questions:

Can you uninstall them from teh machine, including clearing them from Dev Mgr and then re-add them?

Are they on the same IDE cable? (master/slave jumpers good?)

Do they show in the BIOS?

Have they always been like that or did the problem just start?

Is the PC current on AV software and has anti-spyware software been run?

 

[ddrueding]

Answers:

This problem "just started", the machine is a gateway less than 2 years old. Never opened.

They are an the same cable, I will check jumpers when I crack the case.

They do show properly in the BIOS

NAV is running and current, SpyBot S+D was run (with full updates) 10 minutes ago.

I'll see if I can influence the device manager info when I crack the case.

But I can watch the disk anagement screen and see the disk being moved from one drive to the other. The volume visibly dissapears and reappears from drive to drive as the cd-rom disk is inserted and removed.
This leads me to believe the hardware is fine.

 

[ddrueding]

removing the drives from the machine caused an error message during post "no cd-rom drive found" that has never been seen before.

It also removed the drives from the device manager and from browsing.

Reconnecting the drives did away with the error and restored the drives to the same state as before (present, but not working).

Help?

 

[i]

Can you boot off a CD?

Knoppix or a DOS CD? (Everyone has a bootable DOS 6.2 CD with Windows 3.11, right?)

 

[blakerwry]

i would suspect a software problem.. most likely with something like inCD or direct CD.


btw, you're code shouldn't work... 1) switchind drives works by typing the drive letter followed by a colon. Typing "CD d:" does something completely different. 2)the dir command should ALWAYS have output. It should display information about the current volume at a minimum(even on a blank CD).. not displaying anything sounds quite odd.. does the computer freeze up at that point?

Try copy and paste from the command line so we can see what exactly is going on.

 

[blakerwry]

also, what does disk management say when you ahve a CD inserted? does it give you any volume information?

 

[ddrueding]

i would suspect a software problem.. most likely with something like inCD or direct CD.


btw, you're code shouldn't work... 1) switchind drives works by typing the drive letter followed by a colon. Typing "CD d:" does something completely different. 2)the dir command should ALWAYS have output. It should display information about the current volume at a minimum(even on a blank CD).. not displaying anything sounds quite odd.. does the computer freeze up at that point?

Try copy and paste from the command line so we can see what exactly is going on.

I agree, it should display something, but what is showed is exactly what is shown. No CD burning software is or has ever been installed on the PC.

 

[ddrueding]

also, what does disk management say when you ahve a CD inserted? does it give you any volume information?

This is the other interesting part, disk management shows the correct volume appearing and dissapearing as the disk is inserted and removed, so the hardware definatly knows what's going on.

 

[ddrueding]

Can you boot off a CD

Knoppix or a DOS CD? (Everyone has a bootable DOS 6.2 CD with Windows 3.11, right?)

An excellent question, and one I didn't bother to answer. Shortly after working though the basics here, I realized the PC was still under warranty. F*** it, it's their problem. Called Tech suport, they quickly (within 2 hours) authorized a service visit to a local gateway country store for repairs.

 

[ddrueding]

Well, we got the system back from the techs...and when asked to provide an answer they said the following:

The IDE cable used in the machine had a broken wire, this wire controlled the disk insert notification. Therefore the system never bothered to scan the disk.

I think this is BS*....any thoughts?


*It doesn't really matter, it works now. But I am a curious one.

 

[blakerwry]

Disk insert notification is an invention of windows, not of the IDE spec developed many many years before CD-ROMs even existed.

I think it's a total BS story.

 

[blakerwry]

actually, probably the mac... but who's counting

 

[ddrueding]

Yeah, they referenced a MS KB article. But the article is talking about the drive's sensor being broken, and this was happening to BOTH drives (unlikely).

 

[blakerwry]

straight from the horses mouth

CD-ROM Opportunities

Currently there is very little movement from CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drive manufacturers to adopt Serial ATA. The Serial ATA performance benefits to optical devices are not yet compelling and therefore Serial ATA adoption is often viewed as an unnecessary expense.

It is possible that Serial ATA will replace parallel ATA in personal computers in the future. If Serial ATA becomes dominant in the computer market, manufacturers of CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives will have good reason to create product lines that support an interface other than parallel ATA.

The strongest candidates for a parallel ATA alternative are Serial ATA and USB 2.0. Both options have Windows support. Beyond cost, the biggest factor on which a new bus may be adopted is BIOS support for booting.

There is a hidden opportunity in the event of parallel ATA CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives choosing a new storage interface. Currently CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives do not have the ability to notify Windows of a media change. Windows is then required to poll the device to determine media status which prevents some types of power management for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives.

Right now neither Serial ATA nor USB has a standard method for media status notification. Microsoft encourages the industry to work toward creating standards for media status notification before CD-ROM drives are prepared to move to alternative interfaces.

This is exactly how I thought windows did it (and how I know linux distros that support automount of CD drives do it).

 

[i]

There is a hidden opportunity in the event of parallel ATA CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives choosing a new storage interface. Currently CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives do not have the ability to notify Windows of a media change. Windows is then required to poll the device to determine media status which prevents some types of power management for CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives.

I always assumed that was why the CD-ROM activity lights blinked every few seconds on the old Pentium systems running Windows 95.

 

[blakerwry]

yup, my fedora system puts a notice in the event logs that shows that there's no CD in the drive... often resulting in something like this in the event logs.

Jan 11 04:24:57 mepis1 kernel: sr0: CDROM not ready. Make sure there is a disc in the drive.
Jan 11 04:25:29 mepis1 last message repeated 32 times
Jan 11 04:26:30 mepis1 last message repeated 61 times
Jan 11 04:27:31 mepis1 last message repeated 61 times
Jan 11 04:27:47 mepis1 last message repeated 16 times

 

[Pradeep]

Well, we got the system back from the techs...and when asked to provide an answer they said the following:

The IDE cable used in the machine had a broken wire, this wire controlled the disk insert notification. Therefore the system never bothered to scan the disk.

I think this is BS*....any thoughts?


*It doesn't really matter, it works now. But I am a curious one.

That may have stopped Autoplay etc, but you should still have access to the files when you click on the drive in Windows Explorer.

 

[Tannin]

That was 5.25 inch floppy technology. I don't think that IDe devices work the same way (though I have not checked). You certainly used to get it with floppy drives quite often.