DVD Drive eject issues

[Carol Haynes]

Until recently everything worked fine but the last few days I have been having problems with my DVD drives.

If I have an application loaded that accesses the drives (say ImgBurn) the physical drive open buttons no longer work - even when the drive is not locked by the application because it is doing something.

The software buttons in ImgBurn work fine to eject the disc but this is happening with other apps too that don't have open and close buttons - consequently I have to open ImgBurn just to open the drive trays.

I have never seen this issue before. Anyone any idea what is causing it and how to fix it?

[cranioscopical]

Huh!  I had this happen recently -- puzzled the heck out of me too.  The box in question has one Plextor and one LG.  Push all the buttons you want, no eject but soft eject worked (to my amazement).  If you hadn't mentioned it here I'd still be thinking I'd imagined the whole thing!

I checked all the cables, fiddled around some... drives back again.  Had a brief spell of the 'sticky directory' issue.  Shortly after that my power supply began refusing to boot the machine (Enermax 650w) followed by one of the hard-drives biting the bullet. 

This little tale of woe doesn't help you a bit, I know.  Just wondered if my combination of circumstances gives any clues.  Haven't come to grips with it as I'm busy, so I just said some rude words and shifted to another system.  There's no back-up quite as effective as a redundant system.

Hope you get it sorted!


[Edit -- can't spell, evidently can't proof-read until after posting *sigh*]

[Carol Haynes]

It shouldn't be related to a hard  disc error (I run SMART monitoring from within windows and all drives appear healthy) and my PSU is relatively new and a good make so I'd be very surprised (and annoyed if that has a problem).

It's all very strange. Can't find anything on MSKB about this issue and can't see it as a common issue on PCs in a google search (except XP installed on Mac).

[lanux128]

recently i had to attend to a PC that had a similar problem so i did a firmware update and the eject button started responding again. but on that PC, the problem was from day one.

[Carol Haynes]

I don't have that option as I have the latyest firmware installed already and the drives don't allow 'downgrading'.

The buttons do work - but if I have an app open that accesses the optical discs they seem to grab eject control until you close the app. It's very odd because this didn't happen before. The only time apps took control of eject was when they were actually processing a burn (and even then some apps didn't bother).

[lanux128]

maybe the physical buttons themselves are the problem. try inserting a pin on the tiny hole to eject the drive, sometimes that resets the eject button and make it work again at all times.

btw, what is the brand of your DVD drive?

[Carol Haynes]

They are both Pioneer drives - both are behaving the same so it seems to be a software/windows/driver issue of some kind rather than physical button problems.

[lanux128]

they seem to be driver related. take a look at this thread, almost the same problem. if the problem is only recent, then something must have triggered it - an update, perhaps?

[Carol Haynes]

Sounds like the same thing - same drive model too (and on an ASUS/AMD system too).

Now have I installed DLA software (if so what?) or is it part of Windows XP?

[lanux128]

the poster in that thread could have elaborated on the DLA software, however a wiki search returned this article but i'm not sure whether it applies to your Pioneer drive.

interestingly, one of the "Known Issues":

DLA may prevent eject of media from an optical drive. If this is the case you need to restart your operating system.

[Carol Haynes]

Well that's interesting then because I don't have any DLA software installed (I presume they are talking about things like Nero InCD which I don't install with Nero).

I deliberately don't use that sort of write software anymore because of the issues I have experienced in the past with badly written or unreadable discs. It is also no harder to create a quick compilation and write it to disc. I suppose it could be useful if you have an app that writes data to a hard disc and you want it to write to optical media instead but I don't need that sort of thing.

FWIW when I did have InCD installed you had to unmount drives to get the to eject and it usually worked OK. That sort of approach to drive locking is fine - it is just annoying that simply browsing a CD or DVD means I have to use a programmatic method to get the disc to eject.

[MerleOne]

the poster in that thread could have elaborated on the DLA software, however a wiki search returned this article but i'm not sure whether it applies to your Pioneer drive.

interestingly, one of the "Known Issues":

DLA may prevent eject of media from an optical drive. If this is the case you need to restart your operating system.

I too have DLA on my system, and when I encounter an ejection pb, I just desactivate it/reactivate it, it sorts of reset the drive and usually it works.

[nite_monkey]

If you can't get it to fix, have you tried opening my computer, and right click on the drive and click eject instead of opening a different program? Unless the other program opens faster than my computer, because I have had programs that open way faster then my computer.

[Carol Haynes]

On my system it is quicker to use an app sitting on my Quick Launch bar (2 clicks on left button). If I use My Computer it takes 3 clicks on 2 buttons - plus a scroll if the DVD drive isn't visible in the My Computer window.

I can do that but I'd rather find out what the problem is and cure it.

[Carol Haynes]

I ran MS CD Auto play Repair Wizard and now things work properly again. See this page for an overview of the wizard.

I have VMWare installed and I suspect it is the way VWMare killed the auto play setup. Some registry keys seem to have been lost along the line and the repair utility put them back.

[40hz]

I ran MS CD Auto play Repair Wizard and now things work properly again. See this page for an overview of the wizard.

Bloody! And here I was just about finished wrapping up this two stone sledge to send you...

[cranioscopical]

Glad it's fixed.  What a time-waster!