strange problem with new XP SP2 not seing blank cd-r (only)

I'm using an LG DVD-Multi drive (GSA-4663b or something).

I recently decided it would be time to upgrade from Win2k to XP (two
weeks ago). I was running 2K for years with this hardware and it's
upgrades with no problems like I have had.

So far I have taken it slow installed the OS, patched it up to current
(drivers and OS), and started installing applications. Everything has
been working fine until May 12th/13th (I think I hit windows update
over the weekend).

I have been able to read both burned and pressed CD/DVD media just
fine.

I installed DVD decrypter because it's a fast and easy DVD backup/
writing application and it works fine even with the issue I am having
below.

I needed to burn some stuff to CD so I grabbed the trial version of
Alcohol 120%. I tried burning with it and it kept telling me there was
no media in the drive. Grabbed a fresh disc (Verbatim) just in case it
was a bad one that snuck in. Still get the same behavior. I have tried
turning on and off XP's support for burning and nothing changed. Even
XP itself could not write to media saying the same thing. At the same
time my ability to access network resources went all wonky. This
caused me to be unable to load a web page or access resources on the
local network without trying about 20 times in a row before it worked.
I sorted out that problem with the help of MS KB about a corrupt
WINSOCK2 registry setting.

I uninstall Alcohol and cleaned up something else (I forget what
exactly) and I noticed that XP said I no longer had a DVD-RAM drive
but just a regular CD-ROM so I rebooted and it came back with me
having a DVD-RAM again.

I installed Nero 6 and it was able to burn a CD image I have made. I
had a second image I needed to burn and the problem of not seeing
blank media came back (The media that I successfully burnt to was the
one I initially tried) and switching to another disc did not clear the
problem.

Thinking (because of the network trouble and the CD-R media trouble) I
had maybe hit something that had corrupted my system I have run every
spy ware/virus/hijack/security app I can find and even from a live CD
nothing is showing as wrong, so I think I am safe from that.

I decided to boot back up (After swapping HDD) my old Win2K HDD (never
burn your bridges) and CD burning is working fine under that OS.

I have one free support call to MS left, so I wanted to ask here
first. I would like to use XP because it runs games more smoothly then
2K, but if XP is unreliable (I figured by now it might be stable,
guess I should have waited for SP3) I will just have to go back to 2K.


Has anyone seen something like this. I found one thing with google
where someone is experiancing the same kind of problem, but no
solution.

On May 15, 10:09 am, demianphill... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I'm using an LG DVD-Multi drive (GSA-4663b or something).

I recently decided it would be time to upgrade from Win2k to XP (two
weeks ago). I was running 2K for years with this hardware and it's
upgrades with no problems like I have had.

So far I have taken it slow installed the OS, patched it up to current
(drivers and OS), and started installing applications. Everything has
been working fine until May 12th/13th (I think I hit windows update
over the weekend).

I have been able to read both burned and pressed CD/DVD media just
fine.

I installed DVD decrypter because it's a fast and easy DVD backup/
writing application and it works fine even with the issue I am having
below.

I needed to burn some stuff to CD so I grabbed the trial version of
Alcohol 120%. I tried burning with it and it kept telling me there was
no media in the drive. Grabbed a fresh disc (Verbatim) just in case it
was a bad one that snuck in. Still get the same behavior. I have tried
turning on and off XP's support for burning and nothing changed. Even
XP itself could not write to media saying the same thing. At the same
time my ability to access network resources went all wonky. This
caused me to be unable to load a web page or access resources on the
local network without trying about 20 times in a row before it worked.
I sorted out that problem with the help of MS KB about a corrupt
WINSOCK2 registry setting.

I uninstall Alcohol and cleaned up something else (I forget what
exactly) and I noticed that XP said I no longer had a DVD-RAM drive
but just a regular CD-ROM so I rebooted and it came back with me
having a DVD-RAM again.

I installed Nero 6 and it was able to burn a CD image I have made. I
had a second image I needed to burn and the problem of not seeing
blank media came back (The media that I successfully burnt to was the
one I initially tried) and switching to another disc did not clear the
problem.

Thinking (because of the network trouble and the CD-R media trouble) I
had maybe hit something that had corrupted my system I have run every
spy ware/virus/hijack/security app I can find and even from a live CD
nothing is showing as wrong, so I think I am safe from that.

I decided to boot back up (After swapping HDD) my old Win2K HDD (never
burn your bridges) and CD burning is working fine under that OS.

I have one free support call to MS left, so I wanted to ask here
first. I would like to use XP because it runs games more smoothly then
2K, but if XP is unreliable (I figured by now it might be stable,
guess I should have waited for SP3) I will just have to go back to 2K.

Has anyone seen something like this. I found one thing with google
where someone is experiancing the same kind of problem, but no
solution.

Found something too look at in the system registry.


Under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion
\Explorer\CD
Burning\Drives" there is a key called "Drive Type" that aparently
tells the system what kind of drive the lsited one is.

For my DVD-Multi drive it has an 01 for the drive type (CD-ROM). I
changed it to 02 (CD-RW) and have re-booted.

Sadly this has not fixed my problem. Both windows and Nero info tool
can not see the blank disc to burn to or give me info about.

On May 15, 11:10 am, demianphill... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

On May 15, 10:09 am, demianphill... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:



I'm using an LG DVD-Multi drive (GSA-4663b or something).

I recently decided it would be time to upgrade from Win2k to XP (two
weeks ago). I was running 2K for years with this hardware and it's
upgrades with no problems like I have had.

So far I have taken it slow installed the OS, patched it up to current
(drivers and OS), and started installing applications. Everything has
been working fine until May 12th/13th (I think I hit windows update
over the weekend).

I have been able to read both burned and pressed CD/DVD media just
fine.

I installed DVD decrypter because it's a fast and easy DVD backup/
writing application and it works fine even with the issue I am having
below.

I needed to burn some stuff to CD so I grabbed the trial version of
Alcohol 120%. I tried burning with it and it kept telling me there was
no media in the drive. Grabbed a fresh disc (Verbatim) just in case it
was a bad one that snuck in. Still get the same behavior. I have tried
turning on and off XP's support for burning and nothing changed. Even
XP itself could not write to media saying the same thing. At the same
time my ability to access network resources went all wonky. This
caused me to be unable to load a web page or access resources on the
local network without trying about 20 times in a row before it worked.
I sorted out that problem with the help of MS KB about a corrupt
WINSOCK2 registry setting.

I uninstall Alcohol and cleaned up something else (I forget what
exactly) and I noticed that XP said I no longer had a DVD-RAM drive
but just a regular CD-ROM so I rebooted and it came back with me
having a DVD-RAM again.

I installed Nero 6 and it was able to burn a CD image I have made. I
had a second image I needed to burn and the problem of not seeing
blank media came back (The media that I successfully burnt to was the
one I initially tried) and switching to another disc did not clear the
problem.

Thinking (because of the network trouble and the CD-R media trouble) I
had maybe hit something that had corrupted my system I have run every
spy ware/virus/hijack/security app I can find and even from a live CD
nothing is showing as wrong, so I think I am safe from that.

I decided to boot back up (After swapping HDD) my old Win2K HDD (never
burn your bridges) and CD burning is working fine under that OS.

I have one free support call to MS left, so I wanted to ask here
first. I would like to use XP because it runs games more smoothly then
2K, but if XP is unreliable (I figured by now it might be stable,
guess I should have waited for SP3) I will just have to go back to 2K.

Has anyone seen something like this. I found one thing with google
where someone is experiancing the same kind of problem, but no
solution.

Found something too look at in the system registry.

Under "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion
\Explorer\CD
Burning\Drives" there is a key called "Drive Type" that aparently
tells the system what kind of drive the lsited one is.

For my DVD-Multi drive it has an 01 for the drive type (CD-ROM). I
changed it to 02 (CD-RW) and have re-booted.

Sadly this has not fixed my problem. Both windows and Nero info tool
can not see the blank disc to burn to or give me info about.

So I uninstall NERO and run the cleanup utility they provide, enable
all the imapi stuff again. Then I tell windows to rebuild the upper (I
didnt see a entry for lower) filet and have restarted.

Came back up saying it had installed new stuff and it needed to reboot
again.

It's finally back up, and I am being notified that I have files
waiting to be burned (test file ).

still tells me there is no blank media present.

Alcohol installs by default with an option to hide media types, which causes
the exact symptoms you describe.

On May 15, 2:57 pm, "Dan G" <n... (AT) 12345 (DOT) org> wrote:

Alcohol installs by default with an option to hide media types, which causes
the exact symptoms you describe.

By default "ignore media type" is not checked. I have never gone into
that setting and I just did a re-install of alcohol to check. I can
try turning on that setting it and see what that does.

On May 15, 2:57 pm, "Dan G" <n... (AT) 12345 (DOT) org> wrote:

Alcohol installs by default with an option to hide media types, which causes
the exact symptoms you describe.

Found that Alcohol does not uninstall the direct scsi thingy from some
other company.

I uninstalled that and it's still not seeing blank media. When I
removed alcohol again I made sure it was not set to ignore media.

Good suggestion that lead me to find something I missed, thank you,
but has not resolved the issue.

I have been able to reproduce the problem from a fresh install
(deleted the partition, created a new one, reformatted).
I slipstreamed almost all current windows updates into the media for
install (had to burn it to DVD).

I installed XP sp2 from the media. After that I left a blank CD-R in
the drive so I could easily tell if the system saw it as a blank disc
or not. After each reboot below I created a new restore point.

After installing (with the network card unplugged) I installed anti-
virus/anti-spyware software from removable media. I reboot and
everything is fine.

I then connect the network and hit windows update (there are a few
items that don't slipstream in well). I install those and reboot.
Everything still works.

I get the latest (Nov. 2005) nforce3 motherboard drivers and install
all but the IDE and Network (not using on-board network chip). I
skipped the IDE because it causes lockups and BSOD problems in 2k, and
from what I see on the net it does the same in XP. After rebooting
everything still works and the CD is showing 700MB free space.

Next I install the latest Nvidia geforce 7 series drivers. I reboot
and I see that "My Computer" shows no info about the media in the DVD
drive. I grab Nero info tool (requires no installation and does not
touch system settings) from removable media and it says there is no
media in the drive.

I don't understand how that could be cause by the video drivers. So I
uninstall them and tell the system to roll back to after the nforce
motherboard drivers but before the geforce video drivers. Once the
system has rebooted and finished the rollback to the restore point the
drive shows me 700MB free space and the Nero tool says there is a
blank CD-R in the drive.

I re-install the geforce drivers to see if I can trigger the issue
again and I still see the blank media.

I am going to do another clean install and try to:
1. Reproduce it again
2. See if I can get a better idea what causes this since it's a
problem that IMO needs to be fixed.

Is there anything you guys can think of that I should be logging/
looking at to get to the bottom of this?