It seems this problem has been around forever in Windows. You have a disk in your optical drive, you remove it without closing the directory window browsed to that disc’s location, or without closing an application that was using the disc and Windows thinks the disc is still in the drive. Even if you stick a new disc in the drive and refresh the directory, Windows still thinks that the old disc is still in the drive. You can even browse through the disc, opening folders and stuff.
I remember this happening in Windows 95, and the problem not going away even after reseting the computer, or turning it off for a few hours. Sometimes the label of the disc will stick to drive name, although you can load up new discs. For a year and a half my optical drive was labeled BEST_GAM(e)S_EVER or something, which was pretty awkward.
Why is this still happening in XP? Has anyone had it happen in Vista? And what’s the best way to get rid of this when it happens?
I had this happen in XP once, and it ended up being caused by a virtual-drive program. I think it may have been Blindwrite. As soon as I uninstalled it, the problems went away.
I’m not using anything like that at the moment, although I have in the past. Probably goes without saying, but I never used any virtual drive programs with Windows 95. I don’t think I used any with 98, either.
No, this time it actually fixed itself when I restarted my PC. And it still runs/read/burns fine. It seems to be more a problem with Windows than the drive itself.
When I eject media on my home machine, Windows Explorer will auto-refresh to reflect the ejected drive status. If I was browsing the drive at the time, it will drop to the next drive in the list.
Maybe it’s a matter of driver/firmware? The drive isn’t reporting to the OS properly? Maybe not virtual drive software, but other CD/DVD apps (like Nero or whatever) that hook into the AutoPlay stuff?
If it’s a CD or DVD, and you remove the disc while the directory is open, the directory should refresh and display an emtpy drive directory. If you remove something like a USB key or MP3 player, Windows will remove the temp drive, and the directory will default to the next directory on the list. For me that’s Program Files.
That’s a lot of the use of the word “directory.” Yeesh.
The firmware is up to date, I just formated my PC about two months ago.The only burning apps I use are ImgBurn and BurnatOnce, which don’t have all those constantly running floater apps Nero and Alcohol have, which I could see causing this type of problem.
I just ejected a DVD from my drive, and Explorer refreshed and dropped to the next non-drive under My Computer. The DVD drive was F: and it skipped G: (empty CD-ROM drive) and H: (Empty memory card reader on the printer) and went to Shared Documents. So it could have skipped the other drives because they were empty, but it certainly didn’t display an empty drive directory. I didn’t re-close the empty drive, though (I just did, and it stayed on the Shared Documents folder).
The firmware is up to date, I just formated my PC about two months ago.The only burning apps I use are ImgBurn and BurnatOnce, which don’t have all those constantly running floater apps Nero and Alcohol have, which I could see causing this type of problem.
I don’t have any floating Nero apps/services running, unless they’re running under something else or with a goofy name. Regardless, it was just a thought/guess.
