CD Burner disappears after DVD burner is installed

[samtesla]

Greetings,

I just installed a Pioneer A06 DVD writer, Nero, the works. It worked for a day, then both it and its roommate, an HP9100i CD writer, disappeared. Kind of. Windows could not detect that they had a disk in them, but the CD burner would work with its own software (Roxio).

I then wised up and found out that Nero and Roxio don't mix. I uninstalled everything hardware and software, and even nuked the registry of all entries of both software packages (Adaptec leaves lots of registry entries). Removed both drives physically, rebooted, windows is happy.

I install the DVD burner and Nero again. Fine. I install the CD burner again. Fine, both drives visible. Then I use the DVD burner and voila, the CD burner is gone again. Nero sees it, but not Windows.

Hardware details:

P4 2.4, Asus mainboard, 512mb ram, win2k
IDE0: A pair of WD hard drives
IDE1: DVD Burner as Master, CD Burner as Slave



Any ideas will be appreciated! I wonder if there is a double secret handshake deal that won't let a CD Burner in IDE1lave, or some such mundane detail.

ST

[samtesla]

Just a follow-up, when I say Windows does not see them, I mean the drive shows up, the letter is ok, the drive type and hardware ID is correct, I do get the tray refreshed when a disk is inserted, but when I insert a CD and try to access the drive with Explorer it says "Please insert a disk". Other apps like Nero CD SPeed do find it and can use it.

ST

[troyvcd1]

I would back up everything on your hard drives. Reformat and reinstall.

[dougy69]

is one set to master and the other to slave

[handyguy]

Don't ever put Roxio on XP, cuz XP already uses Roxio & if you overwrite it's files, which is what you did, your drives disappear. Very common. You could try Roxio 6 but I don't think its worth the risk. Maybe you can use Restore to get out of it.

[QuaiBoy]

I remember back when I was still using EasyCD, all of my optical drives disappeared when I installed a new version. Oddly enough, the solution was to reinstall Windows Media Player! I did so, and they all reappeared. Strange as it sounds, even if you don't use WMP give it a try. And keep that crap off the machine from now on!

Best of Luck,
-Evan-

[samtesla]

I removed Windows Media Player as well as it had lots of Roxio references in it (thanks to Digital Rights Management, etc).

Not to offend our friends at Adaptec/Roxio, but EasyCD Creator (version 3.5 and 5.0) are major pieces of . As much as I'd like to reinstall everything, it's not in the tea leaves just yet.

ST

[QuaiBoy]

Since it's now gone, just for the heck of it before you go through the reformat process, try reinstalling WMP.
Also, make sure that no processes are running in the background without your permission. Try the free Tweak All (www.abtons-shed.com).

Good Luck,
-Evan-

[samtesla]

The problem has been traced to Nero; I have a feeling it installs its own CD Driver in place of what Microsoft ships, because if I just remove from Hardware Panel and reboot and it finds them, and uninstall Nero, it's still bad. It only fixes itself after I physically unplug the drives, BIOS proclaims them gone, then reinstall.

I would not mind NOT using Nero, as Roxio 5 works fine (such that fine is) but the Nero CD ships with a bunch of other stuff I'd like.

ST

[hech54]

Want to hear something REALLY funny?...I have Nero, Roxio Easy CD Creator 5, NEO DVD, B's CLiP, B's Recorder Gold, Mediaplayer, Musicmatch Jukebox and two DVD Playing softwares on my XP Pro.....I STILL have NO idea how all of this stuff remains running without wiping each other out....just lucky I guess.

[lablover7]

I had the same issue. I un-installed NEro INCD all is fine now

Joe

[widemouth]

I have seen this exact problem with Easy CD creator.

When it is first installed, it writes the CD writer Drive Letter into the registry. By installing another drive, you have probably bumped the CD drive up a driver letter and then easy CD creator wont see it as it looks in the registry for the drive letter that it was first installed with. Uninstalling and reinstalling may not refresh the Value in the registry.

Cant remember where in the registry it is kept but I think it was obvious in somewhere like HKLM/Software/Easy Cd creator.......

Hope this helps.

[richard98]

I had the same issue. I un-installed NEro INCD all is fine now

Joe

Same here. I could access the drive from Nero, but not from Windows explorer. Uninstalled Nero completely, then re-installed it without InCD and everything works perfectly now.

[samtesla]

I un-installed NEro INCD all is fine now

And how is this done? I am running Nero Express 5.5 and to the best of my knowledge I did not see it anywhere as it being installed. Of course the rocket scientists at Ahead could have added it like a service or something?

Thank you! This is taking 5x times more than I was planning, yikes.

ST

[samtesla]

Final Update... The CD Burner appears to not be supported by Nero. For some bizzarre reason the driver that Nero loads malfunctions and both burners are no longer visible by Windows Explorer.

Nero claims they support the 9100c but not the 9100i which is what I have. However, all their software saw the 9100i and worked fine with it, but killed the Windows Explorer side.

InCD was not an issue, but many people reported a problem with it so I did that as well.

Also, the 9100i came up as a problem with XP (not yet for me, but future). So, after 370 odd CD burns (transferred my entire LP / cassette collection to CD) the 9100i was given to my 11 year old for her system.

I was not thrilled to give the 9100i up, but Nero comes with a nice DVD player and lots of other software that is useful, and I did not want to install things piecemeal.

Thank you for the help! I did learn quite a bit.

ST