Computer related help.

[pecunium]

A little while ago my DVD/CD drive died. It doesn't think it's dead, but it never recognises anything I put into it.

This is really annoying because I have a couple of pieces of software I'd like to install, and one which I can't activate (I used the online trial version to set it up, but it turns out I can't use the code to activate it... one wonders why they have the code).

It occured to me that something might have been confused (and perhaps I might have screwed up by installing/using a registry correcting program; perhaps the files got screwed up). I did some poking about the web and this is a possibilty. But I am a trifle leery of just mucking about with things. Aware, but not super aware, is my level of use. The real nuts and bolts of things are a trifle opaque to me.

The fora I looked at seem to think this is, actually, the problem (though usually when someone installs burning software).

The recommended fix seems to be:

It is a Windows thing, losing drives when installing/un-installing burning software…

If the drives are still listed in the Device Manager, delete them then, carefully follow this fix:

"Upper/Lower Filters:

a. Click on Start --> Run --> and type in 'regedt32' followed by the enter key
b. Expand the "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE" key (looks like a folder) by double clicking it (or clicking the "+" next to it.)
c. Expand the "SYSTEM" Key
d. Expand the "CurrentControlSet" Key
e. Expand the "Control" Key
f. Expand the "Class" Key
g. Look for a key containing the following string of letter and numbers:
{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
h. Highlight this key by left clicking once on it
i. On the right hand side you are looking for "UpperFilters" and "LowerFilters" under the "Name" column, once you find these delete them by right clicking on them and choosing "delete"
j. Exit the registry by clicking on the "X" in the top right hand corner of the screen.

Which gives me some questions.

1: Why delete the device from the device manager.

2: I have a lot of folders with that name in the regedit directory. (24). Four of them have, "Upper Filters", none have lower. I didn't look at any of the sub-directories.

3: If I try this, am I risking a further mucking up of the system?

4: If I do this, and it doesn't work, will replacing the drive be worth it? The computer is probably being replaced in the next year or so anyway, so spending a whole lot on an internal device seems a bit silly, if an $80-100 external will suffice. I'd rather not have one more piece of hardware to haul around, but there are some games I'd like to play; games which want the disk.

Ideas?

Comments

I'd

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Uninstall the device via Device Manager to see if Windows reinstalls it. It's a time-tested method for dealing with problems. Ittsa shotgun cure, but it often works.

2. It looks like a popular fix. I've got upper and lower filters listed.

3. From the recommendations on line, I doubt if it's too bad.

4. You should be able to buy a new internal drive for around $24.00. I'd replace it. If the computers a bit err, elderly, it'll have a PATA drive. If it's not quite as old, it'll have a SATA drive. Either one are quite easy to replace.

Re: I'd

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's a laptop. I guess I'll go look at the prices, if that doesn't fix it.

Re: I'd

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Ahh...laptop is a different beast then. What model laptop is it? some are cheap, some are ridiculously expensive.

Re: I'd

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

HP Pavilion: The monitor saysm dv-8000, but I don't know if that's the monitor, or something to do with the specific machine.

The drive is, per properties, TSSTcorp CD/DVDW TS-L532M

Re: I'd

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Those match up to each other, but the drive looks to be a min of $50 and most places have it for $80 or more. I'd try the software fix and see how it works...at 50-80 it treads into the almost not worth it realm.

Commenting for Terry; his computer has died on him

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Ok, so he dismounted the dvd drive in the Device Manager. He went into regedit and went through all the folders that had 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318 in the name. He went through them and deleted the filters. There were some folders that only had lower, some that only had upper, and one folder that had upper and lower. Twenty or thirty minutes later he shut the computer down and went home. He now has no mouse, no trackpad, neither in safe mode nor in regular mode, and regardless of what port he puts the mouse in.

The cursor is sitting dead centre on the screen, and occasionally hourglasses.

Your opinions are solicited... (I'll be reading them to him, I'm a Mac user and just taking dictation here.)

ETA: "last known good config" FTMFW!

Re: Commenting for Terry; his computer has died on him

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

Try starting the computer in Safe Mode.

Open Device Manager. If the DVD drive is installed, uninstall it.

Reboot.

Apologies if my suggestions toasted the laptop. I should have suggested backing up the registry. If you've ran reg cleaners against it, they probably did. If you can boot into safe mode, you should be able to restore the registry.

Sony laptops have a hard drive partition that can restore the OS. If all else fails, contact HP to see if they have a similar system.

Re: Commenting for Terry; his computer has died on him

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Not your fault. And even if I'd backed up the registry I don't think that would have helped, since I couldn't get past the login screen.

Commenting for Terry; his computer has died on him

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Ok, so he dismounted the dvd drive in the Device Manager. He went into regedit and went through all the folders that had 4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318 in the name. He went through them and deleted the filters. There were some folders that only had lower, some that only had upper, and one folder that had upper and lower. Twenty or thirty minutes later he shut the computer down and went home. He now has no mouse, no trackpad, neither in safe mode nor in regular mode, and regardless of what port he puts the mouse in.

The cursor is sitting dead centre on the screen, and occasionally hourglasses.

Your opinions are solicited... (I'll be reading them to him, I'm a Mac user and just taking dictation here.)

ETA: "last known good config" FTMFW!

[crisavec.livejournal.com]

Optical drives are dirt cheap...probably under $30 these days. I'd just replace it.

[rubin110.livejournal.com]

Do you have access to a Windows CD, or possibly another machine that can burn a bootable CD, such as a linux live cd? If you can get your machine to boot off of the drive then it's a software issue.

Just read some more of the comments, looks like your Windows install is sort of dead. Hope you have a backup? Another step would be to use the recovery option with a Windows CD. Other then that you're kind of screwed. If you were in or around the SF Bay Area, I'd offer my services to you.

Somehow out of all of this, if you magically went for buying a new machine to correct your problem (wouldn't be correcting as you'd still need to get your data off of your old machine, which actually isn't too hard if you have one of these), I highly recommend going with something that runs Mac OSX. Way easier to debug and correct issues (if any) then with Windows.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

What I don't have access too (now that the poblem of the mouse is fixed) is a working DVD/CR drive. It was trying to brute force some sort of repair of that which caused the mouse problem.

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

The idea to try booting to a Windows or other bootable CD is a good one. If all your hardware is OK, it should have no trouble booting to the CD. That will at least help you decide what your next course of action should be.

The problem with the recovery disk you get from a lot of manufacturers is that it's often a disk image. That means you'll erase everything on your drive when you restore. If it's a regular install CD, you might be able to re-install without losing your old data.

If it comes down to an issue of saving your data and doing a brand new install an Ubuntu live CD is an easy way to access your hard drive if your drive .

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No snark intended, but since the problem which started the whole thing was/is the CD/DVD drive refusing to recognise disks, a boot disk probably isn't going to be much use.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

No, she has the right of it.

The solution you found on the internet (that may still be the right one, last night's missteps aside) was intended to remedy a situation where Windows still recognized the drive, but failed to mount anything inserted in it. That can very well be a Windows-side failure, while the hardware is still intact and working. Has to do with confusion in the registry which, sadly, can be caused by some (many? all?) of those registry cleaner products.

Booting from CD has the advantage of side-stepping Windows' drive mounting processes altogether--you can boot from a CD without a hard-drive in the machine, much less an OS installed. If you have any kind of Windows CD at all, give it a shot and see what happens.

Failing that, give me a call tonight and I'll remote in to your machine and see what I can see.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Damn... I forgot to get a thank you out as soon as I got online. I'd like to think I'd have remembered last good config on my own, but I was also feeling really funked.

I don't think I have a boot CD. I have an upgrade (to XP-Pro, from the last machine. My HP guy told me it wasn't worth doing that with this one, because Media Center is more recent), but not a generic, as both machines came with it installed.

Recognizing, but failing to see anything mounted is the case.

As I recall, it went tits up without a re-boot. I removed one disk, and went to install a game. It got partway through the installation, and hung up.

When I tried again... nothing.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

No worries.

"Last Known Good Config," sadly, has a ridiculously limited set of uses, usually when you end up blowing something away that you didn't mean to. Frankly, I often despair of ever using it--until given the opportunity on a golden platter.

The scenario is actually not surprising or impossible--games often do funky things with the registry when it comes to the optical drive, be it making sure the second disk is requested and recognized, or checking for the disk in the drive before allowing the game to run. So it could very well have jacked shit up in that way.

So long as it's a hologrammed Windows CD, go ahead and throw it in and reboot, see if you get the option to boot to it. Those "upgrade" CDs are, in reality, full versions of Windows, and should work as bootable CDs.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll try that when I get home. Sadly I've no net at the house, so working on it that way won't be doable, if... oh damn. That disk is twelve miles away from the house (packed up for the move).

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Hee. If it's not one thing, it's another, eh?

Okay, well give it a shot when you have a chance, if you can wait that long. Just replacing it probably won't be cheap, as you'll need to get a replacement drive from HP (they can be proprietary like that on laptops).

As a point of note, and for dealing with HP if you need to, DV8000 is your model number for the whole shebang.

Hmm, in fact, here's another idea (looking at pics of your model of lappy online): Shut the lappy down all the way and flip it over--there should be a way to unlock the optical drive. You may have to take the battery out and look under it to find an unlock/eject switch. It may also be right near the Windows COA label.

Remove the drive from the machine, boot into Windows. Shut down, re-seat the drive, and boot it up again. That could clear the registry of its memory of the drive and force Windows to reload the drivers.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of that. I have the needed 'drivers (and know just where they are). So what I ought to do is swing by the bunker tomorrow; when I'm running other errands, grab the disk, grab the micro-drivers, and give it a shot.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Drivers for the TSSTetc.etc. are built into Windows XP, so you shouldn't need them... but hey, can't hurt to have them.

Let me know if/how that works.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I meant the precision screwrivers for taking the case apart.

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Ha! Well there I go, my mind all on software...

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Dismounting/remounting/rebooting didn't work. Now to get a boot disk and take a stab at that.

Still fails to recognise disks.

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

Depends on why the CD/DVD is refusing to recognise disks. ;)

Software faults can cause really bizarre errors, sometimes even errors that look like hardware faults. Which is why it's a good thing to try booting to a CD/DVD. If it fails at that point, you know it's not a software problem and can stop beating your head against the wall messing around with registry edits, and re-installs.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

My mistake. I am informed, but not expert on the bloody things.

Sorry.

[hamadryad11.livejournal.com]

NP. Just wanted to clarify why I was giving you such seemingly odd instructions.

Just enough knowledge to be dangerous, eh? ;)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

No, enough to, usually, know when I'm in over my head. Some skill in networking (the army thought it was a good idea) and a tolerable ability to do research.

It's when things like this, which have convolutions which aren't intuitive/logically obvious, crop up, that I feel somewhat out of my depth.

Which was why I didn't just go mucking about before asking for some sort of advice. It might be that the general plan was sound, and the implementation I did hit local variation; or that the general doesn't work on my machine.

In any case, the present problem has been corrected, and I'm none the worse off than I was before I tried it.

All hail the restore point.