Have Dell desktop with Windows XP OS. Seems the drives have stopped working. System says they are working properly but when I insert either a CD (with data files) or a DVD the computer pulls up the drive and says there is nothing on the disc (0 bytes). Tried running all type of adware & Norton utulities with no luck. Help!

Hi DriveFrustrated,

Could you please confirm that these are two separate drives? You have the problem in a CD drive and in a separate DVD drive on the same system?

Windows drivers for optical drives very rarely break as they are generic and written by Microsoft - Windows uses the same driver for everyone so there's not normally a problem with them getting corrupted or conflicts from different manufacturers. However, it shouldn't do any harm to go into Device Manager and uninstall the CD and DVD drives. Then reboot your PC and Windows should auto-detect them and re-install clean copies of the drivers again.

Let us know if that helps

Yes, they are two separate drives -- a Samsung DVD-ROM SD-616T and a Sony CD-RW CRX216E

Originally Posted by DJNafey

Hi DriveFrustrated,

Could you please confirm that these are two separate drives? You have the problem in a CD drive and in a separate DVD drive on the same system?

Windows drivers for optical drives very rarely break as they are generic and written by Microsoft - Windows uses the same driver for everyone so there's not normally a problem with them getting corrupted or conflicts from different manufacturers. However, it shouldn't do any harm to go into Device Manager and uninstall the CD and DVD drives. Then reboot your PC and Windows should auto-detect them and re-install clean copies of the drivers again.

Let us know if that helps

This probably isn't related to your issue, but I thought I might chip in my two cents. Recently I had a plethora of computer problems, as DJNafey can attest to :P. However, at one point both my dvd rom and dvd rw stopped working for no apparent reason. After a bit of research, I found out that a program/application called INCD (that was put on my computer when I installed a Nero Suite), tends to cause tons of problems on disc reads.

In my case, both drives showed up, but my drives said they couldn't read the content of the discs in them. However, as soon as I completely got rid of INCD, my drives started working fine, and have been sense then. Don't know if this helps, but it is something to look into perhaps.

Added Edit: When I first installed the Nero Suite, my drives worked fine. About a day later, one disc had one time it wouldn't read, then about a day after that, no disc would read in either drive. Point being, if INCD was installed at some point, it might have not caused problems until now (just as it took time for my INCD to start acting up).

Thanks for the comments -- however I never installed Nero. Some more specifics on the problem:

It recognizes that a CD is in (as the mini-icon 'CD' shows up on the drive in the MY COMPUTER folder) but does not sense there is anything on the CD -- doesn't give any kind of error message. When I click on the CD drive it just tells me there is a CD there with nothing on it (by reading size and comparing available space on it -- both are the same).

The Device Manager says both drives are working properly.

On the DVD drive, even though I did not input a DVD it looks as if the PC thinks there is a DVD there (because there is a mini-icon "DVD" on the drive when I view it in the MY COMPUTER folder). I can input a DVD but when I click on it it says:

D:\is not accessible. Incorrect function

Originally Posted by Kellnos

This probably isn't related to your issue, but I thought I might chip in my two cents. Recently I had a plethora of computer problems, as DJNafey can attest to :P. However, at one point both my dvd rom and dvd rw stopped working for no apparent reason. After a bit of research, I found out that a program/application called INCD (that was put on my computer when I installed a Nero Suite), tends to cause tons of problems on disc reads.

In my case, both drives showed up, but my drives said they couldn't read the content of the discs in them. However, as soon as I completely got rid of INCD, my drives started working fine, and have been sense then. Don't know if this helps, but it is something to look into perhaps.

Added Edit: When I first installed the Nero Suite, my drives worked fine. About a day later, one disc had one time it wouldn't read, then about a day after that, no disc would read in either drive. Point being, if INCD was installed at some point, it might have not caused problems until now (just as it took time for my INCD to start acting up).

You might want to check if your cdrw software is known to cause any problems. I understand you didn't install Nero, so INCD isnt the issue. Perhaps though, there is a similar program running?

When I had my issue, it did weird things like you are having. It would show a dvd as being in even when it wasnt. Or it would tell me a drive wasnt excessible, or wasnt win32, etc. I know it sounds really silly, but make sure you cdrw software doesnt have any reports of randomly causing problems (even months after install) like my dvd burning software did. In my case, I checked google....usually a good place to start.

Good luck with it!

Thanks for your input Kellnos - I agree that it does sound like it could be a software conflict.

If looking into that doesn't come up with the answer, it could be a cable problem inside the PC. I've written an article about troubleshooting floppy drive problems in the FAQ section of the site and it's equally relevant to CD/DVD drives: http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/19.html

I'm assuming that both drives are on the same IDE cable. If so, you might like to try moving one of the drives to the primary slave position, i.e. the second plug on the cable that the hard disk is plugged into.

When you say "check if your cdrw software is known to cause any problems" what exactly do you mean? How do I check this? You indicated you checked google -- what specifically did you search for?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Kellnos

You might want to check if your cdrw software is known to cause any problems. I understand you didn't install Nero, so INCD isnt the issue. Perhaps though, there is a similar program running?

When I had my issue, it did weird things like you are having. It would show a dvd as being in even when it wasnt. Or it would tell me a drive wasnt excessible, or wasnt win32, etc. I know it sounds really silly, but make sure you cdrw software doesnt have any reports of randomly causing problems (even months after install) like my dvd burning software did. In my case, I checked google....usually a good place to start.

Good luck with it!

"If looking into that doesn't come up with the answer" - I asked the same thing of Kellnos -- how do I check into this? Can you provide any specifics on how to do this? Like where do I look, what do I search for, etc...

Thanks!

Originally Posted by DJNafey

Thanks for your input Kellnos - I agree that it does sound like it could be a software conflict.

If looking into that doesn't come up with the answer, it could be a cable problem inside the PC. I've written an article about troubleshooting floppy drive problems in the FAQ section of the site and it's equally relevant to CD/DVD drives: http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/19.html

I'm assuming that both drives are on the same IDE cable. If so, you might like to try moving one of the drives to the primary slave position, i.e. the second plug on the cable that the hard disk is plugged into.

In my case, I started with the error it gave me most often (something like, this disc is not a win32 application, or something like that) and typed that right into google. I then tried different word searches, and eventually added in my dvd rw drive's brand name. In my case I was actually kinda lucky that my problems started within a few weeks of getting the dvd rw, as I could make an educated guess that my problems were related to either new hardware or new software.

In your case, I might suggest trying some variation of the "0 bytes" wording into google.

Just now I tried "optical drives won't read discs" and got a page that might be of use:

How to Troubleshoot CD-ROM or DVD-ROM Read Issues

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q218617/


Once again, for all I know your issue is nothing like what mine was, but given that I recently had such issues at all, I wanted to give some info. The best advice I can give though...stick with this forum!!!!! These fellas helped me out over the course of months with a huge problem I was having with my computer, so I can attest to the fact that they want to help