Windows 10: DVD drive behaving oddly

Well, my DVD drive has been behaving oddly of late. I use it mostly for audio playback with my aging but still great CDs and occasionally for trying to make a bootable DVD ISO. (So far, no luck.) But after the system goes to sleep and reawakens the drive is invisible and cannot be used without rebooting. After reboot it takes about a minute (with a disk loaded) to be recognized, after which Winamp takes over and the music plays. The system apparently does not recognize blank DVDs, which makes using them awkward.

That's part of the problem. The other part is that, somehow, I have acquired a drive (E CD Drive. This is not listed in diskmgmt.msc but appears in File Explorer and Total Commander. Clicking on it produces a "drive not found" message. The normal (J DVD RW DRIVE - Audio CD Is present.

So 1. How can I tame the DVD drive to respond to a disk after sleep?
and 2. How can I get rid of (E CD Drive?

I ran Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:wim:G:\Sources\Install.esd:1 and SFC /scannow successfully.

:)

 

Explorer Behaving oddly

The issue doesn't present itself on the new account. though then again that account has an almost empty onedrive folder whereas my main has 350GB

 

Explorer Behaving oddly

My windows explorer has been having some odd behavior that just started recently. Specifically it just doesn't load the files its seeing properly. The files still exist and other programs have no problem finding them.

Best case (opens but doesn't load icons and can't reorder files ie, by name/date)





Worst case (doesn't even load any files.)





Any other program still seems to be able to access the files just fine, IE from a recent file list, so the files are still there and can be read just fine.

Restarting the explorer process can somtimes restore some functionality and SOME of the icons load, like so





I dont know if its related but the ability to take screenshots is also no longer functional. I optained the above using the 'snipping' tool as the printscreen button doesn't do anything.

restarting the computer breifly restores full functionality but eventually it reverts to the above behavior.

 

Check your Autoplay settings? What behaviour are you expecting if you insert a blank disk? Do you mean you can't write one?

That sounds like a virtual drive. Do you have any programs that you've used to set one up?
PowerISO or similar? If you can identify the program used to create it, that should give an easy way to do so.

Perhaps see
How to delete Virtual CD/DVD ROM Drive from My Computer - UnlockForUs
Deleting Virtual Drive made with MagicISO | PCMech Community Forum

 

Yes, I am trying PowerISO. Good call.

I expected to see the drive containing the blank disk. If the system can't see the drive it won't write to it. Will it? I have tried to burn to a blank disk only to get a "no drive found" error comment. However, if there is already an audio cd mounted and I substitute the blank disk the system will see it.

 

What is your Windows build?
(Windows key + R, winver)

Quite a long time back there was a problem with the handling of DVD drives. I found I had to write a small script to poll the drive so inserting a disk was recognised and autoplay was triggered. However, you are finding Autoplay does work. I'm wondering if you are seeing something similar.

You should see the DVD drive in the navigation pane of file explorer if there is a disk in it, otherwise not.

 

1703 / 15063.608

Autoplay works after a reboot. Right now there is an audio cd in the drive and the drive is invisible to File Explorer. I will now reboot with the cd in the drive . . .

. . . The drive was visible after reboot. It didn't autoplay but so what. Context menu offered "Autoplay" and "Play." Hit autoplay and Winamp; Winamp started up but failed and had to restart it. Now playing Harpsichord Music of 18th Century France. Fantastic. Will now eject and enter another CD . . .Dvorak, Slavonic Dances. Autoplayed ok. Now will put PC to sleep . . . Woke up and started playing again. Removed CD. Drive fell off of File Explorer but remained visible in Total Commander. Reinstalled Cd and it autoplayed.

I can't make it fail -- but I'm confident that it will. I'll try to note when and why.

 

Try these suggestions: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...other-programs

 

It happened again. This time I was away from the computer for a couple of hours. I put it to sleep when I left and when I returned the DVD was missing even though there was a CD mounted. I wonder whether a longer time of sleep produces some deeper kind of sleep.

Spunk, thanks for the lead. I'll follow it after dinner.

 

spunk, I looked at your reference and noted at the bottom "This method should be used on Windows 7, Windows 8 or 8.1, or Windows 10 version 1507. The issues fixed by this method shouldn't occur in Windows 10 1511 or later." I'm using 1703. I think i'm getting into deep water here. some really strange things are happening:

Suddenly, I cannot bring up the Recycle Bin. Clicking on the desktop icon does nothing, though right click brings up the context menu. I was able to set it up in File Explorer, with the help of an add-on favorite files utility (Actual Windows Manager). I am going to try removing some of the more recent programs, such as PowerISO and see what happens. Failing that I'll try a previous restore point.

 

I'm reposting to this thread rather than opening a new one. Here's what's up: I did a system restore to earlier this month and the results were good. A lot of crazy things were corrected. Even the DVD played without complaint -- for a while. Now it will only work after a reboot or a long sleep period. And then only for about 3 minutes. It just disappears. I suppose I could get a usb DVD drive but what happened to this 2-month old computer?

 

Press the Win key+X choose Command Prompt (Admin) In the Elevated Command Prompt type SFC /scannow, this will replace any missing or corrupted system files.
Also try running a Clean Boot and see how that goes.

 

Greetings, all. I reinstalled Windows and am going through the process of installing programs. Happy to say the dvd player is behaving as it should. Marking this as Solved.

 

Glad you found a way forward.

Two ways to often avoid doing that:
1. an in-place repair install -which keeps all programs and data and most settings
2. Using disk imaging routinely to create compressed copies of Windows, disks and partitions- something all regular contributors do and recommend.

Once you have your new gleaming installation up and running with drivers ok and before making any other changes, create your first disk image.

Here's my write-up on the value of disk imaging.

Everyone who contributes regularly here uses and recommends disk imaging.

If you use it, you can recover from:
- a failed disk drive (restore to a new one)
- ransomware (which encrypts your disk)
- user error
- unrecoverable problems from failed updates to problem programs
- unbootable PC (hardware faults aside)

Images also act as a full backup- you can extract files too.

You can even use images to help you move more easily and quickly to a new PC.
Can be used with Laplink software to transfer your build automatically to another PC

Imaging can even help you sleep at night knowing you have a second chance.

Creating disk images lets you restore Windows and all your imaged disks and partitions to a previous working state from compressed copies you have created and kept updated on external storage media, quickly and probably without technical help.

Many here recommend Macrium Reflect (free) as a good robust solution and more reliable than some others. It’s
- more feature rich
- more flexible
- more reliable
than Windows Backup and Restore system images.

It's well supported with videos, help and a responsive forum.

There are other such programs, free/commercial, some with simpler interfaces, but Macrium R is one of the most robust and reliable.

How long does it take?
SSD+ USB3 - maybe 15 mins for the first system image, less thereafter
HDD + USB2 - maybe 40-50 mins
That’s with little personal data, few programs installed.
- of course, depends how much you have on C:
(You can and should image all your partitions and disks)

Once you've created your first image, keep it updated with e.g. differential imaging- which images just changes from the first image, more quickly, and creates a smaller image file.

You need a backup medium - say- twice as large as the total amount of data you are imaging to keep a reasonable number of differential images. This will vary dependent on the number of images you keep, so is only a rough practical guide.

Some comment that system restore isn't always reliable; if it works and solves the problem, great. But sometimes restores won't work or fail. And of course a restore point only covers a limited number of aspects of the system. That’s where disk imaging comes in.

(There's a tutorial on Macrium in the Tutorials section, and a couple of videos in the user videos section on this forum)
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Backup Restore Tutorials
Windows 10 instructional videos by Ten Forums members

 

Thanks, Dalchina. I normally would have made a restore disk -- in fact, I did, but for the old computer. I wanted a clean install from an MS ISO in order to shake off as much of the HP pollution that I could. Now that the system is running fairly smoothly I will take your advice. I have a copy of Macrium at hand and will set it up for backups and restore today.