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CD/DVD read drive Won't install

I have two physical drives that have become crippled. When I look at the 'Device Manager' list I see the two drives with a Red Exclaimation in front of the line items. I right click on each of them to un-install. One is a Toshiba DVD read drive and the other is a Sony CDRW drive. My W2k OS is suppose to find and attache the device driver upon reboot, which it does not. I beleive the cause of this problem was when I loaded a bad version of Nero 5.5 that was expired. When I un-installed it using MS s/w remove tool it left stuff in the registry. I went thru the registry and removed all other 'Nero' related items. My system had Roxio EZ CD creator running on it before, now it says I'm missing some .dll files. They mush have been deleted from Nero removal. How do I restore or re-install the two drives?

Kyle Schroeder

First try reinstalling the latest version of Nero from www.nero.com, then restart if prompted, then uninstall again (though I would recommend using Nero instead of EZCD). Uninstall EZCD also. Sometimes you can have conflicts between them (though I haven't had any trouble with any machines I work on running Nero, EZCD, and CloneCD among others).
Is this on WindowsXP or 2000 or ME or what?

If you're using 2000 or XP, go to this registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

Delete the "Upperfilters" and "Lowerfilters" values (export the key first, just in case)

-dog*

rwsam

ASKER

dog

I don't have disk drive to read a CD. Remember that they are both diabled? OS is W2k

rwsam

RWrigley

Try going into the device manager, go into the properties of the defective drive, and update the driver. Tell it to "Display a list of known drivers", then tell it to "Show all hardware of this device class". Select the standard CD-ROM driver. Save and reboot. This might get your CD-ROM working again.

Out of curiosity, in the properties of the drives, what is the error?

rwsam

ASKER

RWrigley;

I have tried this and each time I reboot and look at the device manager list, the drives become disabled again, or I see a red exclamation preceeding the drive name. There must be something in my registry that is doing this? How do I read the error of each drive? No such item in properties.

Dogztar;

What does deleting the two items you mention do? I'm not very experienced at registry edits.

TIA,

RWSam

Kyle Schroeder

It removes the driver entries for those drives which could be what's hanging it up. This is usually caused by Easy CD Creator. The required files will be recreated when the drive is re-installed (be sure to uninstall from Device Manager first).

-dog*

CleanupPing

rwsam:
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Kyle Schroeder

This is almost always caused by the UpperFIlters/LowerFilters at the registry key I specified.

rwsam

ASKER

dogztar,
Sorry for not getting back.
My problems' proposed remedies were sidestepped by a more serious matter. My pc had a non-recoverable HD failure that required a new hard disk replacement. My dealer has a FIVE year warranty and replaced the Western Digital 60gb 7200rpm with an IBM deskstar 60gb 7200rpm drive under warranty (ie., for free). So, as a result of re-installing the s/w everything is working now.

Sorry, I couldn't verify your suggestion of deleting upper and lower filters . . .. ..

Thanks for your help.

RWSam

Kyle Schroeder

Ack...an IBM drive? Scary...hopefully it won't die on you also. They have a very bad reputation (there is/was a class-action lawsuit against IBM for the 60GXP and 75GXP series drives)

Glad you resolved your problem. Since we were unable to help you fix it, please post a free question in the Community Support TA (https://www.experts-exchange.com/Community_Support/) and ask them to refund your points and move this question to the PAQ (Previously Answered Questions). You won't lose any points, and the knowledge in this article will be archived. Or you can choose a comment from above and award points anyway, or use the "Split Points" link to divide points amongst several people who commented.

Thanks!

-dog*

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rahul_singh

I had the same problem where installing Nero screwed up my registry and the CD/DVD drive would not work. I tried everythng from system restore, system fie scan to removing, uninstalling and reinstalling the drive. The Fujitsu tech support people suggested all of these things and when it didn't work, the final recommendation was to reformat my computer. However I searched this fourm and removing the "lower filter" registry value as suggested by dogzstar above followed by uninstalling and re-installing the drive worked!

I can use my CD drive now. Thanks a lot for your help dogzstar!

Kyle Schroeder

Glad it was helpful to you rahul_singh!