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CD not recognized

I have a Windows 2000 system that the CDs are recognized on. They disappeared after a software upgrade which was supposed to make the CDRW write rewriteable media. The drives are seen by the hardware and can be used to boot the system from CD. I have uninstalled the software, the drivers and reinstalled them both manually and with the new hardware wizard. Nothing makes them recognized.

In the event log I see an error that says aspi32 service failed to start due to the following error: The system cannot find the file specified.

I copied the cdrom.sys from a Windows 2000 system which has the same configuration and did not have the upgrade software installed, but that didn't help. I also checked the working system and it does not have the aspi32.sys file or any other file with that name.

My last attempt to get the drives recognized, I booted the Windows 2000 CD and repaired the installation, but that didn't work either.

How can I get the CDs recognized without reinstalling Windows 2000?

Thanks

Rick

CrazyOne

See if this link helps

http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa571/aspi.htm

The Crazy One

CrazyOne

Also try this Start > Run and type in

services.msc

and see if you can locate the aspi service in the list and set it to manual and see what happens.

rickytick

ASKER

There is no aspi service in the list. The CDs are IDE not SCSI, but it appears that something modified the registry to make the cds appear to be scsi. At least that is what I am gathering from the information I've gotten so far. If this is right, any ideas how to fix it?

CrazyOne

Yeah I concur but not sure what to do though. Umm I don't suppose you backed up the registry before you first installed this software? Also which or what is/was the name of this Software? When you uninstalled it did you do it through Control Panel > Add/Remove programs? Have you tried physically removing the CD Drive from the system? First uninstall the CD Drive from the Device Manager then shutdown the system and remove the CD drive. Now reboot. This may help clear out the gunk so to speak. Now shutdown again and hook the CD drive back to your IDE and reboot and see what happens. Now if this doesn't work try changing the Master/Slave jumper to the opposite of what it is now and see what happens. If this still doesn't correct the problem see if you can get your hands on another CD drive and see if it works. If it does then something probably has happened to the CD drive that this problem is happening with.

CrazyOne

It is probably to late for doing this since you did a repair but when the system boots Win2000 will give you the option to hit the F8 which gets you to the menu. On this menu there is an option "Last known good configuration". Sometimes this works especially when there is a driver and/or hardware problem. I would do this before doing anything else I have suggested.

Also see if you can isolate anything referencing aspi or aspi32.sys by using the registies search function. Don't delete anything from the registry unless you feel comfortable that it would be alright to remove the specific entry.

rickytick

ASKER

I tried deinstalling and unplugging and replugging and reinstalling. The new hardware wizard sees the drives and loads the driver, but apparently the gunk is still in the registry. :-/

I did a second install of 2k into another directory and it sees the cds and can read from them.

Is there a way to unload just the hardware section of the registry in this new install and load it into the other registry? Then again would it be just better to reload the software onto the new installation? If I do reload the software and keep the second installation how do I clean up the boot menu?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

CrazyOne

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