XP thinks all CDs are blank media unless in drive at boot

[zingzang]

Whenever I insert a CD (pressed or recorded) into my drive, windows thinks I've inserted a blank CD and offers to launch Nero etc. to record the CD. The only time windows recognizes the CD has data on it is if the CD is in the drive when I boot. but even then, if I insert another CD, its not recognized. Nero is able to verify disks I burn, so it can read from the drive.

The same thing happens now when I insert my Verbatim U3 USB thumb drive (but another non-U3 thumb drive works fine)

In both cases if I try to access the drive in explorer I get the Error "G:\ is not acessible. The request is not supported."

I haven't added any new hardware, other than possibly a USB card reader thats no longer connected. Device manager doesn't show any problems.

I'm running a Windows XP sp1 with all security patches.

any suggestions? Thanks

[pam123]

Do you have a recent restore date when everything was recognized correctly?

[zingzang]

I don't use the drive that often so I don't know when it started failing. and now its been a while since I first noticed it, so no, I can't go back to a restore point. I did try removing the drive in device manager and rebooting so it would discover it again, to no avail.

[pam123]

Unless the usb key and the burner decided to fail in the same way at the same time I think your problem is software.
Read through this on Registry Repair and Recovery : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318159/
If that won't work then you'll need to do a repair install of Windows, if that "SP1" isn't a typo then you need to install SP2, and redo all the updates and the drivers.
The repair install won[t hurt your data.

[Cricket]

Try that CD drive in another computer. If the problem persists, the drive is defective and needs to be replaced.

Same with the Verbatim USB drive...if it doesn't work in another computer, it's gone.

Cricket

[jayb1234]

On that popup that gives you the options, check "take no action" and see if that fixes the problem.

[zingzang]

Hi,

thanks for all the suggestions. turned out there was a (corruption?) issue with a roxio driver. I uninstalled Easy CD/DVD creator and fixed my problem.

[pam123]

Thanks for the update!
What are your plans for preventing recurrences?

[glc]

I think this is a possible warning to people not to install both Roxio and Nero on the same machine. Yes, I'm sure some of you have and don't have any problems, but it's not a good idea.