At 06:53 12/07/05, Robert Bailey wrote:
>My Computer has a DVD drive and a CDRW drive working for some time.
>They quit reading at the same time. I replaced both drives and
>cables no luck...I am using Windows XP professional OS. The CDRW
>writes and I can read the files on another system, but I see no
>files when I look onn the one they were written on. they do not
>see data on disks I purchased either....


I had similar symptoms with my main Windows 2000 computer. (I
tried replacing the drive and the cables, just like you.) There
is a Microsoft article mentioning that WinXP and Win2k share
this problem. See <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/EN-US/>.

The problem can occur after an update to or removal of third party
CDROM or DVDROM burning software. In addition, someone told me
that a recent security patch for Windows Media Player affects
the way the computer burns CDs and can cause these same effects.

Here's a more detailed version of the Registry fix described in
the Microsoft article. It worked for me!

Open Regedit (use the Start, Run menu) and navigate to

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFCl-087002BEl0318}

(Note that HKLM is short for HKey_LOCAL_MACHINE.)

In the left pane of the Regedit window, highlite this key by left
clicking (once) on {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFCl-087002BEl0318}

[You should make a backup of this registry key before making changes.
Click on "Registry" in the menu bar at the top of the Regedit
window and choose "Export Registry File". Give the exported file
a name and save it to your Desktop. Now if you decide to undo the
changes that you made, you only need to double click the saved
registry file to get things back to where they were.]

Now for the changes. {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFCl-087002BEl0318} should
still be highlited.

In the right pane of the regedit viewer you'll find two subkeys
called "UpperFilters" & "LowerFilters". Delete the values for these
subkeys. (For example, right click on Upperfilters and choose Modify
from the menu that appears. In the small data window that appears,
drag your cursor to highlite everything (all the numbers) and hit
the delete key. You should be left only with 0000. Do the same
thing for Lowerfilters.) Reboot the computer.

I should mention that I haven't had occasion to burn a CDROM since I
did this. The Microsoft article mentions that removing the filters
might affect third party burning software and that you might have to
reinstall your burning program (Adaptec, Nero, etc.).

Regards,
Bill

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