My computer is about 5 years old and i am running windows xp and up until a week or so ago, i didn't have any problems playing a cd on my puter or for that matter, burning, ripping and so on with both CDs and DVDs.......first of all, i don't have a clue what is my D drive, E drive or F drive and so on. all i know is i have two places to put discs in and the bottom of the two was usually the one where i would put in a music cd to listen to it....that was also the place where after i put in a cd, a message would come up asking me what i wanted to do next...

now when i stick a cd in there, nothing happens and when i try to explore the drive, nothing opens.

i checked my device manager and it says everything is working and up to date.i just don't know if the letters (D, E, F...so on) have been mixed up or what.

it's driving me nuts...somebody help please.

thx in advance

Try uninstalling the drives in Device Manager, then reboot.

Windows will reinstall them, hopefully resolving this issue.

no it didn't insomniac, but thanks for trying. one of the things i can't figure out is why my D drive can at some times called a DVDRam drive and at others, a CD drive....i also have three different types in my CDRom/DVD drives from device manager and they are: Generic DVD-Rom SCSI CDRom device; HL-DT-ST DVDRam GSA-4081B; and Lite-on LTR-52327S.............i'm not sure if one of these is supposed to be chosen or what....sorry to be such an idiot, but it's one thing i'm fairly good at when it comes to computers.

Whenever you see an entry like "Generic DVD-Rom SCSI CDRom device" etc, it's almost always a virtual drive.

A lot of program install these, like Alcohol 120%, Daemon Tools, UltraISO etc.

The "HL-DT-ST DVDRam GSA-4081B" sounds like an LG DVD burner, going by the model number. (Nice burner by the way :) )

The "Lite-on LTR-52327S" is a LiteOn CDRW.


I don't know what you physically have, so I can't say what's correct or isn't.

What I would do, at least for now till you get this sorted, is to find the parent program, and disable the virtual drive/s.


Another thing to try is to uninstall the controller responsible.

So if all these physical drives are on the Secondary Controller, uninstall that and reboot. (instead of uninstalling just the drive itself)

Then see what Windows reinstalls. (Obviously do this after you disable all virtual drives).

And don't try this if you have hard drives, and optical drives on the one controller. (which is never a good idea anyway)

hi again insomniac.... i got rid of Daemon tools and that generic virtual drive it had created, but still no luck in playing a cd like i used to, or for that matter no luck in creating a homemade cd from songs i downloaded. a pre-recorded or a blank cd simply are not being read it seems. in the meanwhile, could you let me know which controller to uninstall?..... in device manager there are a lot of controllers in the list and i'm so dumb i don't know which one to choose. I found under disc drives WDCWD1200BB-16DWAO and am not sure what to do with that. or should i just stick with the DVD/CDRom drives when uninstalling drives or drivers?..... you had mentioned you don't know what i physically have for a system but i would be happy to provide you with as many details as this little pea brain of mine can find.

and thanks in advance for putting up with this, but i've noticed you have helped zillions of people, so i'm hoping you consider this kind of like a charity challenge

The controller I wanted you to uninstall is listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers (Click on the + )

Then uninstall the controller your CD/DVD drive/s are on, usually the Secondary Controller?

Reboot, and Windows will reinstall the necessary drivers.

Don't do this if you have a hard drive on the same controller. If you don't know, don't do it.

What physical drives do you actually have, and do you know how they're installed? (EG 2 drives on the Secondary Controller as Master/Slave)

If more than one, do they all do the same thing?

Does Device Manager list any errors for any devices? (Usually a yellow or red ? or !)

What burning software do you have installed?

Do you have System Restore you can try?


Also, it's worth trying the Registry edit outlined here, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/EN-US/

If you aren't comfortable doing it manually, then download the "Guided Help".


(Keep in mind that problems like this can be very difficult to fix, and that a format and reinstall may be on the cards once you've exhausted your options. I'm assuming off-course that you have a Windows XP CD?)