Thursday, April 26, 2007

"Prepare this blank disk" in Vista

A few times recently I've popped a CD or DVD into one of my Vista machines, and it has popped up this message:



The only problem is... the disc in the drive wasn't blank. I've experienced this with at least two machines running Vista Business and Ultimate, 3 different CD-RW and DVD+/-RW drives, and at least a half dozen different professionally pressed CDs and DVDs -- so it wasn't a random read error or a dusty disc or anything like that.

Even more strange is the fact that I can "browse" the CD/DVD just fine from the command prompt using the good ol' dir and cd commands. This got me to the various setup.exe files that I was in a hurry to get to in the past, but tonight I took a few minutes to try to actually fix the problem.

Microsoft has a KB article that suggests some registry changes to the "lowerfilters" and "upperfilters" keys, but these didn't do anything for me.

The fix was pretty painless once I found it: just uninstall the affected devices from Device Manager and then Scan for Hardware Changes to re-detect them. It's a cheesy fix that should be entirely unnecessary, but it works, and it's easier than poking around in the registry.

I'd like to know more about the real underlying problem in Vista, but I'm not quite curious enough to track it down further since I've got my drives working properly now. If you happen to come across more information, please post a comment and let me know.

16 comments:

Unknown said...

Tried the changing filters and uninstall reinstall... still doesn't work. Any other ideas?

Unknown said...

The answer that finally worked for me:
I started having the problems after installing VMWare Server and disabling AutoPlay as it suggested. I then came across the fix found here;

signpark.proboards81.com...hread=1173766042

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentC­ ontrolSet\Services\CDRom

change "Autorun" value from "0" to "1"

Hope this helps someone else...

jwyse said...

Thanks for posting the fix that worked for you. The URL you posted got cut off though - here's the correct link for anyone else having this problem.

This is probably a more accurate/elegant solution to the problem I had also -- I did have VMWare Server installed on each of the machines that showed this issue. I'll try this one if I run into the problem again.

Anonymous said...

Thanks mate, worked fine.

Anonymous said...

The uninstall/reinstall thing worked great!! Thanks a lot!!

Unknown said...

Had the same problem and googled it, found a guy on another forum mentioning having to put files in the temporary windows burn directory to be able to explore it...

Well, i did, and strangely instantaneously i could access the files, then i right-clicked the drive and choose to delete temporary files. then the disc is working fine, no need to install and uninstall !!

Enjoy, and thanks for all those who share their fixes, as this helps everyone else as microsoft probably do not know about their own operating system.

Rafik

jwyse said...

Source of Rafik's info -- I haven't tried this myself, but I'll check it out next time I have to reinstall Vista.

Unknown said...

The registry fix worked for me after a restart. I also had VMware server on the machine and had disabled Autoplay.

Thanks for the help!!

MikeonTV said...

Worked like a charm.

Ryan Clemson said...

Thanks for the post Imv. The registry fix to enable Autorun worked for me.

Anonymous said...

OMG the uninstall and reinstall worked!!! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

that registry fix to enable Autorun worked for me.
thnx IMV.

Anonymous said...

WOW! It works! Thanks a lot...

Anonymous said...

It worked for me too. A simple and fast solution for a problem that messed my computer for very long.

Thanks a lot.

Unknown said...

thanks a lot
I got this solution after more than a year of hunting

Jordan said...

Thanks a lot, this helped me as well, some crappy Dell Vostro on Vista didn't recognize the official Office 2010 DVD... Did as you said, went to device manager, removed the DVD drive, rightclicked the topmost tree item, "Scan for changes", then it reinstalled it and read the DVD straight away! Thanks again for having saved me lots of trouble!