[Ham-Computers] RE: CD-ROM question

[Hsu, Aaron (NBC Universal)]

In Windows, if you see an icon for the CD/DVD drive in "My Computer", then the drive itself is recognized and the driver for the drive is properly installed.

What kind of disc is it - a commercial "pressed" CD or a CD-R?  Music or data?  If it's a CD-R, then you could be seeing a drive/media compatibility problem - not uncommon and something I've covered in the past.  Does the problem only occur with this one disc?  Do other discs seem to take longer to be recognized than in the past?  If so, it's possibly a dirty optical pick-up in the drive and you need to try a CD/DVD-ROM drive cleaning kit (much like the old floppy drive cleaning kits).

If it's a commercial Music CD, then you might be seeing a copy protection mechanism in action.  If your system is set to "autoplay" CD's when inserted, then when you inserted the CD, it ran the autoplay program (much like the old AUTOEXEC.BAT in DOS) and installed a program that prevents you from playing or "seeing" the contents of the CD.  This is what got Sony into such big trouble a few years ago with their anti-theft "rootkit" installer on certain music CD's.

Anyways, to recap...these are my questions to you:

* If no CD is inserted, is there an icon for the drive in "My Computer"?
* What type of CD - "pressed" or "CD-R"?  Music or Data?
* Problem only with this disc?
* Is the system taking longer to recognize *any* disc?


73,

  - Aaron, NN6O


-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2008 7:35 PM
Subject: [Ham-Computers] CD-ROM question 

Ok everybody here's a good question I think.

I had never seen this before till today.

Say for example you have a cd-rom on you're desktop, and you put a cd in it, light comes on that cd works, BUT you go to "My Computer" and it doesn't show up there.

Driver's not loaded??

Thanks,
Brian 

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