Help with making a CD

[Madge]

I've done this many times on my computer but now it doesn't work the same as it used to.

Usually when I want to burn some songs to a cd, I would have two windows open, one for the songs in my music folder and one for the blank cd. I would highlight my songs and drag them to the blank cd box, then select "write these files to cd" and windows media player would pop up and I'd burn the songs to the cd. But now when I try to open the blank cd window it says that the drive isn't accessible. How do I get it back the way it was? :looklive:

[Sypher]

Hmm, I've had this problem with corrupted CDs. Have you tried using a number of different blank CDs? Preferrably not all from the same 'set', incase there's a problem with a specific set you bought.

[Madge]

I guess that could be it, though I was able to use a Nero burning rom program to burn the cd though it will only play in dvd players and not cd players......:wtf:

I'd rather do it the other way by highlighting and dragging to the blank cd window.

[Sypher]

In Nero, what settings did you use? (okay, we can pretty much assume Audio CD, and not Audio DVD... but just incase)

[Madge]

I made a data cd out of nero.
I have another question, I'm showing that I have a cd drive E and a cd drive J, but I only have one drive. Why am I showing two, and how do I get rid of J?
....and when I put a blank cd in the drive, there's no box that pops up and asks me what I want to do with the disk. It's almost like I never put it in there.

EDIT: Ha! I uninstalled cd drive E and reinstalled it, now it does what I want it to do, but I still have a cd drive J for some reason.

[Sypher]

Well done for the first part. :) Hmm, is J a virtual drive? Nero allows you to create those, so you might want to check the settings there for virtual drives. Same with other programs that are similar, like Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools.

Other than that... can you just uninstall it like E?

Edit - Oh, and a data CD explains the CD/DVD player issue. DVD players generally accept more formats than CD players, so you'd need to do an Audio CD in Nero to use it on your CD player most likely. But that's rather irrelevant now you have the other part working!

[Madge]

I can't uninstall cd drive J because I can't find it in my device manager list. :ashamed:

[Sypher]

Hmm. To be really unhelpful, it sounds like a ghosting drive error which I've seen where the OS believes there to be an imaginary drive when there isn't one. The only total solution I know to this is the one that works with (99.99% of) any Window's problem - total reformat and reinstall.

I'm sure there's a simpler solution out there, but I'm afraid I don't know it. Presumably a bug with the registry somewhere thinking it still has another drive? *Waits for some Window's Guru to shed more light on the topic*

[ShadowClaw]

Do you by any chance have a U3 enabled USB flashdrive? When a U3 device is plugged into the computer it shows up as two separate drives, a CD drive and a removable disk drive. As for the Virtual Disk Drives they are disabled by default in Nero. In Nero the program is called "Nero ImageDrive". However 1 drive is created by default with the other two programs that Sypher mentioned but all virtual drives would still show up under the device manager-->DVD/CD-ROM Drives as a sting of numbers and letters with "cdrom drive" at the end.

~Shadowclaw

[Madge]

Here are some screen shots of what I see. Maybe you guys can make some sense out of it.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v475/Majmun/Clipboard01.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v475/Majmun/Clipboard02-1.jpg

[ShadowClaw]

what is listed under "Unknown"?

~Shadowclaw

[sovietmisaki]

first off it might be a flaw with your drive, and how old is it anyways? in another case you could probably use system restore and hope that works, otherwise reformat your comp like sypher said.

[pieman224]

from what im seeing one of them is a DVD-RandomAccessMemory(RAM) drive and the other is a CD drive. do you perhaps have a DVD drive? if not your simple solution is to cal Best Buy

[Sypher]

Pieman, do you get paid for all this advertising of Bestbuy? :p

As Madge didn't mention any problems with the DVD drive, and as most modern PCs have DVD-RWs (and DVD-RAMs more recently), I'd think it relatively safe to assume that he just has a normal DVD drive on his computer. However having a CD drive (not CD/RW, or DVD, etc.) is less common nowadays (who'd want one when DVD drives are so cheap?) - so that'd be more likely to be the drive he mentioned.

To Madge: As Shadowclaw pointed out, the 'unknown' menu would be worth a look. And as Soviet mentioned a system restore would yes be a nice simple solution if it works. What happens if you right click the drive and look at the properties? Anything that might help identify it there?

[Madge]

Pieman, do you get paid for all this advertising of What happens if you right click the drive and look at the properties? Anything that might help identify it there?
I've done that but I can't remember what it said. I'll do it again tomorrow when I wake up. I'm working midnight shift right now. If I do system restore, how far back would I need to go, because I'm not entirely sure when that showed up.

[YuriRuler90]

I've seen a LOT of threads about LITE-ON drives failing (they usually come with Dells).

Some of the parts on the inside eventually wear out, and neither LITE-ON nor Dell support them fully.

[Madge]

My computer is an HP. I'm not as worried about it now that I have it working, but it'd be nice to get rid of the "J drive".

[Sypher]

How far back you'd need to go is entirely dependent on when the problem occured. Best thing to do is to go back to roughly to just before you think it occured, then if that doesn't work go back to when you're certain it was okay. If it still doesn't work... a reformat is the definitive problem solver. Unless you can just live with a mysterious drive. :)

So what'd those properties say?

[Madge]

I saw nothing helpful in the properties box.

Here's what it says under unknown:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v475/Majmun/Clipboard04.jpg

[jamesminilogo]

Have you got Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools installed as my guess is a virtual drive

[ShadowClaw]

Have you got Alcohol 120% or Daemon Tools installed as my guess is a virtual drive

A virtual drive would still show up under "DVD/CD-ROM Drives"

To Madge: I can't think of anything else that could be causing this without looking at the computer physically. Sorry.

~Shadowclaw