I have a gateway laptop running windows vista, with a dvd/cd read/write/burn… all that stuff. But all of a sudden, without any apparent reason, it’s as if it’s not there! The tray opens/closes as usual, and when I checked the driver status in Device Manager, it told me the driver software for the cd/dvd device is installed properly.
But not only does it not read any dvd or cd I put in the tray, when I click on “my computer” it the cd drive doesn’t even show up as one of the drives! If anybody knows why this is happening, or what I can do, I’d really appreciate it!
Problem solved! Apparently, this is a fairly common problem. I found the solution here, and had to manually modify my registry, which was a little scary since a mistake can be costly!
Well, at least this thread showed us that you would ask us before going to microsoft for help.
I never knew I was that important to you Terry, I’m starting to tear up.
Now where’s that crying smily face?
Haha, actually I did go to the MS website for help, but couldn’t find the answer to my specific problem. So while I was waiting for possible help from this site’s “puter geeks”, I copied the actual error message to the search field in google, and only then did I find the right fix…yay!
Ah, the filter driver problems. It’s disgusting that companies write buggy filter drivers that can bork your CD/DVD drive. Some companies have no shame and don’t care about how much harm their buggy software can do (Sony/BMG, I’m talking to you).
Sony used a filter driver in their infamous audio CD rootkit fiasco. Other audio CD DRM attempts have also used filter drivers. Some computer games use filter drivers to help protect their games from being copied and force you to use the CD in the drive while playing the game.
Legitimate uses for filter drivers are for things like CD/DVD burning software. Programs that allow you to burn a CD often rely on a filter driver. For example, iTunes installs a filter driver to allow it to burn CDs. Sonic burning software installs a filter driver. Those are good filter drivers written by software companies who are responsible. The filter drivers that try to protect content are the EVIL filter drivers that tend to break things.
If that happens again you can use the Filter Driver Load Order program to see what filter drivers are installed. From there you may be able to identify which filter driver is borking things and from there figure out what program or audio CD is installing the problem EVIL filter driver.
An easier way of cleaning out the filter drivers is to go to Device Manager and unistall the CD/DVD drives. Then let Windows detect the drives and install the new hardware. That will get the CD/DVD drives reinstalled with the default filter drivers.
After cleaning out the filter drivers you should reinstall the CD burning software that you use. Reinstalling the burning software will allow the software to restore any filter drivers needed for CD burning. Reinstall iTunes too if you use iTunes for burning CDs. iTunes installs an upperfilter named GEARAspiWDM by GEAR Software. Sonic installs a lowerfilter named PxHelp20 by Sonic Solutions.
That’s exactly what I did; they advised that I uninstall the device before deleteing the upper/lower filters, but it didn’t mention that uninstalling the device alone would fix the problem.
After restarting my laptop, my system automatically reinstalled the driver, and I confirmed everything was working by burning some pics onto a blank cd. Is there something else I need to install aside from what windows installed upon reboot?
I thought uninstalling the device would also clean out the filter drivers. Maybe it doesn’t. I’ve been wrong about things like that before.
If your CD burning programs are all working then there is no need to do anything. Not all CD burning programs use a filter driver. Just keep in mind that if some application that uses the CD/DVD drive stops working you may need to reinstall the application to install its filter driver.
Do you have any idea what installed the filter driver that broke things?
I’m not sure I understand the question; did you mean to ask: “Which filter caused the problem?” If that’s what you meant, then no, I sure don’t. Just glad it’s fixed!
I have a similar problem. Whenever I go to burn a disc on Vista (not using a program like iTunes, but simply adding files to a disc) it pops up and allows me to enter a disc name, like normal. But, then it tries to format and always says that the disc format failed. Any solutions?
I also never burn music to disc from Itunes, because I put all the songs on my Ipod. As for picture files, I simply use the burn feature in the windows (vista) photo gallery viewer, which comes standard with vista home premium. It gives me the option of burning a data file, such as a picture, text file, and also you can burn dvd’s through the gallery as well, but I haven’t tried burning a dvd from there yet. I have not had any luck using the windows vista dvd maker/burner; it simply doesn’t work.
I was just curious if you had any idea what installed the filter that caused the problem. It’s not an easy thing to track down so unlikely you would know.
But high on the list of suspects would be audio CDs that employ some sort of content protection.
I’m going to have to plead ignorant on that. I never use that feature and it’s something that I disable. If I’m going to burn files to a CD I’m going to use a real burning program like Nero.
Again that phrasing is not clear to me. Do you mean what program installed the filter? Whatever you meant, I think my answer would still be the same; I don’t know.
