Drives only recognize contents at startup

[drakezeus 0]

All of my drives recognize their contents upon startup or restart and work fine, but if the disk that was in there at startup is removed and another disk is put in, the drive fails to recognize that there is anything in it. This is the case with all drives - dvd, cd burner, floppy, and even a remote drive, a digital camera attached to a USB port. Attach the digital camera and the software detects no camera. Restart with the camera connected to a USB port and the camera is recognized and everything works fine. Start with a dvd in the drive and it plays fine, but take it out and replace it with another dvd and the drive behaves as if there is nothing inside. I cannot install Civ III because it is a 3-disk set and when I put in the next disk it tells me to put in the next disk, which is in there.

 

I have cleaned the drivers and checked for updates. I have stripped my computer, reformatted and completely reinstalled XP and all software. I brought the tower to work and our IT guy did a scan and assures me that the hardware is all good. Norton is up to date and I have scanned the full system.

 

Odd thing is it seems to be degenerative. Long ago it only affected dvd player but then everything. Downloading from the digital camera via USB worked fine for two years and then went bad. When I reformatted a couple weeks ago everything seemed to be corrected but now I'm back to the same problem across the board.

 

Any help would earn my eternal gratitude. It's a 3-year-old Gateway.

[peterh 1]

Is plug and play enabled in the BIOS?

Is plug and play service or Shell Hardware Detection service enabled (see services.msc)?

Is autoplay enabled for Removable drives?

 

See XP fixes here:

http://www.dougknox.com/

 

[guitim 0]

I am having the exact same problem. I thought that it was my CD drive. I installed an external drive which seemed to work well for the first half hour. My daughter opened the drive while a prgram was loading and it was all over. Now even the new drive will not recognize CDs unless they are in the drive during the boot-up sequence. Someone please help!

[drakezeus 0]

Is plug and play enabled in the BIOS?

 

***There is no plug and play in my BIOS.

 

Is plug and play service or Shell Hardware Detection service enabled (see services.msc)?

 

***Both are set to Automatic and were started when I checked.

 

 

Is autoplay enabled for Removable drives?

 

***Still trying to check that. Is it under Boot in the BIOS?

 

There is an updated BIOS available and I have downloaded it but have not been able to install it - I can't start the computer with a floppy in the drive and if I put a floppy in after starting it is not recognized. Will have to use another machine.

 

[BrucesXP 0]

Hi all

 

Interesting to find this as i have two XP PC's both doing this in slightly different ways started in the last few weeks

 

PC1 has a toshiba DVD ROM which wil not update the left(disk title) or right side(files) of explorer when a new disk is added. I have done the microsoft autoplay wizard and settings to death and un/reinstalled the DVDROM and entire IDE channel drivers. No joy. Also uninstalled my CD writer software (record now 6.7.1) without joy (having failed to find the reinstall disk for some time :-).

A USB DVD writer is completely unaffected by this effect

Interestingly my DVD player software (cyberlink) will spot the new disk, offer to restart where it left and play the new title while Explorer determindly insists the old disk is still there!

 

PC2 is a different motherboard, generally different build etc, no DVD writer at all. There the left side of explorer is stuck despite refreshing re-opening etc but the right side does update. Unfortunately the left side seems to control autoplay so DVD's wont auto play if the last disk was an audio one.

 

There seems to be a run of similar queries on the web starting mid August. Has anyone else got Norton NIS, Acrobat 7.0 or messenger 7.5 which are the only updates I recall both machines have had except Microsoft update ones?

 

 

[drakezeus 0]

Seems to be a conflict between Nero InCD and Norton2005. Following the steps regarding Norton didn't help me but uninstalling InCD solved the problem. I don't know what do next, switch to Roxio or McAfee, but my drives work now. Thanks so much Symantec...

 

http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav...u_sg&csm=no

[BrucesXP 0]

A similar discussion on

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1119555&page=1

may be of interest. Note recent reports of these problems started mid -august after a gap of a couple of years since Nero got fixed.

 

I've had a similar prob on 2 PC's and my conclusion is that it is not any one programme to blame:

The roster I've assembled currently from my own tests and the web included InCD, Nero and musicmatch Jukebox10 with a side swipe at Norton. Note I had this problem and only have the last two programmes, not InCD. I also had a similar but different problem from too many version of messenger on a system with no burner at all.

 

I am concluding the problem is TOO MANY programmes hooking into the explorer shell or adding file filters, and the impact of that on EXPLORER and/or Norton so some programme (pick from a list) is the last straw, especially if it has a complicated relationship with explorer and there are other complicated-shell-linked programmes on the system already (and maybe install order matters too. I won't rule Norton out but disabling it doesn't help (although this doesn't uninstall it's filters so . . . )

 

HTH

[guitim 0]

This saved my life. I was so tired of my computer not working properly. I had a really hard time finding out any information on this at all. This web site is great. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the solution.