Help my drive cant read?

[mad_max911]

I need help. I have a NEC 3540-A drive and my problem with it is i cant read from disks using windows explorer and i also cant enter the drive at all in command prompt (it says device is not ready).
What i can do with the drive is burn. Burning using any kind of software works just fine.
And the wierd part is the disks that it wont read in windows explorer, i can play those on the same drive using winamp or power dvd.
Another thing i noticed is normally when you try and enter an optical drive with no disc in, windows says please enter disc or something. Mine doesnt say anything. It just shows an empty drive.

Please help me.

[Krispy Kritter]

Try removing the drive and the IDE channel(s) in Device Manager and then reboot. Windows will reload the drivers and add all of the hardware.

[redwudz]

A little more direction. Unistall the channel the problem drive is on. That should be a option when you right click on the channel in 'Device Manager>IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers'. Reboot and Windows will re-install it.

If that doesn't help, then the drive may have problems.

[mad_max911]

I tried uninstalling everything it didnt work.
I also tried installing the drive on another computer and it works just fine there.

[budz]

sounds like there maybe a software conflict. do you have incd installed?

[mad_max911]

seems there are some entry points in the registry about incd. I believe it comes with nero burning rom

[budz]

seems there are some entry points in the registry about incd. I believe it comes with nero burning rom

The problem you're having seems to be a software conflict related to INCD. It's a known fact that INCD will cause problems with dvd reading/burning. INCD does not have to be installed with NERO BURN. You have a choice not to install it. Uninstall NERO BURN then use the NERO CLEAN TOOL. It will clean out all the AHEAD NERO files in your windows registry. You can download the NERO CLEAN TOOL from the NERO website.

If you need burning software for DVD discs then use IMGBURN.

[mad_max911]

i have uninstalled and cleaned all nero tools and incd but the problem is still there.
I think the only way to fix this soon is to make a full reinstall of windows

[budz]

i have uninstalled and cleaned all nero tools and incd but the problem is still there.
I think the only way to fix this soon is to make a full reinstall of windows

If you're comfortable by going into REGEDIT which will allow you to remove any AHEAD NERO files in your windows registry then you won't have to do a reinstall of windows.

Go to your start button, click on RUN, then type in REGEDIT, then click on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, then click on SOFTWARE. Then look for a AHEAD, NERO or INCD then right click on it to DELETE it. Delete any entries that relate to AHEAD. Do a system restore point before doing this if you don't feel comfortable in editing your windows registry.

[bevills1]

Are you running WinXP or Win2k, and are the unreadable discs -R media? If so, you probably have the same problem afflicting many NEC drives. I know of only 3 solutions to this problem which are stick to +R media, get another brand burner or get another OS. Incidentally I don't think InCD is the problem because I have the problem with a NEC 3520 in Win2k but not Win98 of which both OSs have InCD installed. For more details on this wide spread NEC problem see http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=209168.

[budz]

Are you running WinXP or Win2k, and are the unreadable discs -R media? If so, you probably have the same problem afflicting many NEC drives. I know of only 3 solutions to this problem which are stick to +R media, get another brand burner or get another OS. Incidentally I don't think InCD is the problem because I have the problem with a NEC 3520 in Win2k but not Win98 of which both OSs have InCD installed. For more details on this wide spread NEC problem see http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=209168.

It's a known fact INCD causes software conflicts w/regards to reading/burning dvd media. The OP has mentioned he put the drive in another computer w/no problems.

[aedipuss]

the software may cause a conflict in the drive filters. try this.

Click the Start button, click Run.
In the Open box, type Regedit, and then click OK.
Click the plus sign (+) next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Click the plus sign (+) next to SYSTEM.
Click the plus sign (+) next to CurrentControlSet.
Click the plus sign (+) next to Control.
Click the plus sign (+) next to Class.
Click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
On the right hand side of the window, click UpperFilters.
Click Edit on the menu bar.
Click Delete, and then click OK.
On the right-hand side of the window, click LowerFilters.
Click Edit on the menu bar.
Click Delete, and then click OK.
Click File, and then click Exit.

Reboot the computer.

[mad_max911]

still none of the suggestions work. Thanks for trying to help me though.

[bevills1]

InCD has caused no burning problems for me, but it may for some. Note in 1 post in the link from my 7/29 post the poster was able to get the NEC drive reading -R again only to have it fail again when trying to read a particular disc which same disc caused it to begin to fail reading -R initially.

OP doesn't say which OS is running or what OS is on other system tried, but working on another system even with same OS may not mean OP's problem isn't the wide spread NEC problem. I hope he finds a solution but am very doubtful since so many other NEC drives have this problem. Many NEC users have no such problem, but more than a few do.