[Laura Ann Brito]

I have a fairly new HP DV4-2165dx Laptop. My DVD Drive has been used very lightly. I have tried quite a few things. I have uninstalled it, reinstalled it, checked with regedit if it has the lowerfilter and upperfilter and it does not. I cannot get into the Properties area of the CDRom portion of the Registry due to it saying: An error is preventing this key from being opened. So I suppose my DVD portion of the Registry is corrupted. OR?? Anyway, when I put a DVD or CD written on my old laptop or XP machine (I don't know if others work or not at this point) it will make that seeking noise, and keep doing it for quite some time, then once the drive letter finally does appear for that DVD Drive it only has Desktop and reports the disc as being writable (it is not, because it is full) and they are readable on my other machines. I need to back up files on this laptop, read DVDs and just do my work in general. I think I need to remove the DVD Drive from the Laptops whole system, not just uninstall it. Because I think that it is not installing a NEW driver, but installing the same bad driver, or something along those lines. I am fairly certain that there is nothing wrong with the CDRom drive itself. Is there a way to clean a whole machine from a bad driver and have it install it cleanly? correctly? I also tried to get into BIOS to check there, but pressing F1 doesn't do it on this laptop, and F10 doesn't either....so I am not sure, but I think it is showing up correctly anyway.

Any help is appreciated....
Thank you
Laura

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I have been trying to get this working now for about 10 days, off and on. I am just not sure what I have to do, maybe I need to start over? Restore the machine? But would have clean out the registry? How about regclean or some program like that? Would that repair a damaged portion that is giving an error? Or can I just delete these parts of the registry? Please hopefully someone will help me out. It is very frustrating...

[Laura Ann Brito]

I have been trying to get this working now for about 10 days, off and on. I am just not sure what I have to do, maybe I need to start over? Restore the machine? But would have clean out the registry? How about regclean or some program like that? Would that repair a damaged portion that is giving an error? Or can I just delete these parts of the registry? Please hopefully someone will help me out. It is very frustrating...

[Laura Ann Brito]

I decided to do some tests.

It will run a commercial CD with drivers on it, I can explore it with Windows Explorer
It will not run a DVD+R burned on my old Sony Laptop (these do run on my XP desktop machine)it sees these discs as blank media
It will not play a commercial DVD (American Beauty) it just spins up, then calms down, the drive won't even appear in Explorer

Hopefully this helps some,

Thank you again!

[rshaffer61]

A registry cleaner will not increase your system's speed or performance, and has the potential to break your registry to the point that your PC is no longer bootable.
We strongly advise that people stay away from any of the registry cleaners out there.
Go HERE to get more information about why registry cleaners aren't needed.


Thanks to Sari for the explanation




Broni's canned speech:

One of these may help:
1. Uninstall the drive through Device Manager.
Restart computer. The drive will be automatically reinstalled.
or...
2. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060
Restart computer.
or...
3. Download, and run Restore Missing CD Drive patch
Double click on cdgone.zip to unzip it.
Right click on cdgone.reg, click Merge.
Accept registry merge.
Restart computer.
or...
4. Go to Device Manager, click a "+" sign next to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
You'll see two items:
- ATA Channel0 (or Primary Channel)
- ATA Channel1 (or Secondary Channel)
Right click on each of them, and click Uninstall. Confirm.
Restart Windows. They'll be automatically reinstalled.
5. Go to Microsoft's site http://support.micro..._drive_problems and follow the steps.
6. Try the guide at this link http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982116

Thank's to Broni for the instructions

[Laura Ann Brito]

Under 4. Go to Device Manager, click a "+" sign next to IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.
You'll see two items:
- ATA Channel0 (or Primary Channel)
- ATA Channel1 (or Secondary Channel)
Right click on each of them, and click Uninstall. Confirm.
Restart Windows. They'll be automatically reinstalled.

In my system I have:Intel PCHM SATA AHCI controller port 4

So I am stuck as I do not have ATA Channel0 or ATA Channel1

I am running a Windows7 system.

Thank you for any advice...on how to proceed, I did all the above this so far.

[rshaffer61]

No problem then skip that step. There are different ways listed so if one doesn't work then hopefully one of the others will. The one that seems to work the best is deleting the upper and lower filters.

[Laura Ann Brito]

No lowerfilters or upperfilters either, I am stumped completely. I did the whole thing, and it still won't read homemade DVDs, CDs or Commercial DVD Movies.....

[rshaffer61]

No lowerfilters or upperfilters either, I am stumped completely. I did the whole thing, and it still won't read homemade DVDs, CDs or Commercial DVD Movies.....

That pretty much covers any type of media or format the dvd player can read.
In that case I would say the drive has failed and most likely the read laser has failed. Everything you put in comes up and says blank media correct?

[Laura Ann Brito]

No Commerically burned CDs & DVDs with autostart do run and I can explore them in Windows Explorer.....they just work wonderfully....

But it is the Movie DVDs, Homemade DVDs and CDs that do not work at all. In fact the DVDs/CDs that are homemade come up as blank media, while the Commercial DVD Movies spin up and everything, then suddenly the light goes off and that is the end of that, it won't even see the DVD in the drive (no drive present at this point), if I turn around and put in a autoplay CD or DVD it works....you can read it, run programs and explore it.

Thanks, I really appreciate the help.
The drive does work, I think it is just configured wrong and needs to be reset completely in Windows7, drivers physically removed, drive removed from the registry, anywhere else it might be, and then introduced to the system like it is a new install? Is that even doable?

Laura

[rshaffer61]

Actually there has not been drivers needed for cd\dvd drives since XP came out because the drivers are included in the OS now.
If autostart is a issue in Win7 try this straight from Microsoft on how to start Autoplay.

When you turn AutoPlay on, you can choose what should happen when you insert different types of digital media into your computer. For example, you can choose which digital media player is used to play CDs. When AutoPlay is turned off, you are prompted to choose what you want to do when you insert digital media into your computer.

Open AutoPlay by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Hardware and Sound, and then clicking AutoPlay.

Do one of the following:

To turn AutoPlay on, select the Use AutoPlay for all media and devices check box.

To turn AutoPlay off, clear the Use AutoPlay for all media and devices check box.

Click Save.

To change Autoplay settings:

Follow these steps to specify what should happen when you insert different types of digital media into your computer.

Open AutoPlay by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Hardware and Sound, and then clicking AutoPlay.

Under Media, find the type of media that you want to change the AutoPlay setting for.

Click the action that you want AutoPlay to take when you insert that type of media into your computer.

Click Save.

[Laura Ann Brito]

Ack, I forgot a comma, and you misundertood me because of it! Here I go again...sorry!

No (in answering you that some CD/DVDs do work), Commerically burned CDs & DVDs with autostart do run and I can explore them in Windows Explorer.....they just work wonderfully....

But it is the Movie DVDs, Homemade DVDs and CDs that do not work at all. In fact the DVDs/CDs that are homemade come up as blank media, while the Commercial DVD Movies spin up and everything, then suddenly the light goes off and that is the end of that, it won't even see the DVD in the drive (no drive present at this point), if I turn around and put in a autoplay CD or DVD it works....you can read it, run programs and explore it.

I did the autostart portion quite a few times myself and again, it is still the same....
Thank you so much!
Laura

[rshaffer61]

OK you don't get a prompt that asks you what to do with other cd's or dvd's?
It should give you 3 or 4 options to chose from and you can tell it to always perform that option on that kind of disk.
By movie dvd's I take it you mean only the ones you have made correct?

[Laura Ann Brito]

It isn't the autoplay portion, that is fine, yes it has different options and I have selected the right ones. And NO, when I run these CDs it only says (homemade ones) in Windows Explorer that this is Blank Media. No options come up and I do understand what you are saying and talking about.

Movie DVDs means Commercially Made DVD with Movies like "American Beauty" it just spins up for a little while and completely stops, no light, and the drive letter isn't even present in Windows Explorer. It is completely gone, if I switch out the DVD for a computer CD with a program on it (commercial again, not homemade) it does read it, run it, and lets me view it with Windows Explorer.

I only have one driver in the driver portion of the CDRom portion in Device Manager, CDROM.sys

Anyway, hope this is clearer now...

Thanks again!
Laura

[rshaffer61]

I only have one driver in the driver portion of the CDRom portion in Device Manager, CDROM.sys

Yep this is the OS cdrom file and it is to identify and access the cdrom drive.


Hmm let me guess you are using Windows Media Player to play the movies correct?

[Laura Ann Brito]

Right now yes, but I also have other players on the system. Quicktime and DivX. The HP Programs too that are included in the system. If I need to install anything you feel will work, then I will happily do that. I had itunes on it, but removed that when I read it causes problems.