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Can no longer read disks of any kind

Started by Trial User_Trial User_Tim_*_* , Mar 12 2007 06:24 PM

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10 replies to this topic

#1 Trial User_Trial User_Tim__

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Posted 12 March 2007 - 06:24 PM

I previously installed Alcohol (trial) on my pc, and had some stability problems, so I uninstalled it and looked into some other free ISO reading options. However, after I uninstalled Alcohol my optical drives won't read disks properly. I installed PowerISO, UltraISO, and MagicISO to see if any of them worked better, but the problem remained. If I put the disk in and reboot, it will be there when windows loads back up. Also, I've found that if I put the disk in and wait a couple of hours, it will eventually be recognized and read properly. If I try to access the drive before that, explorer locks up and I have to use the ol' reset button. Now, there must be something about this type of software that causes this, because recently my dad installed PowerISO and UltraISO on his pc, and is having the same problems. I got sick of the hassle and started trying to research the issue, and can't find anything about it. Just missing drives and virtual drive issues. Interestingly, I've once again installed an Alcohol trial thinking it may hold the key to the issue, but nothing has changed. In fact, when I try to mount an image to the virtual drive, it behaves exactly like my physical drives do. I have to wait a couple of hours or reboot before the mounted image shows up. Anybody have any ideas?

I've already tried uninstalling my cd/dvd drives and letting windows reinstall them, and I updated my nforce drivers, but neither of those things helped. I REALLY don't want to format/reinstall everything. It's soooooo time consuming to get all the software reinstalled and get everything set up the way I want it. Please help!

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#2 Tron

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Posted 12 March 2007 - 08:14 PM

Read this: http://forum.alcohol...showtopic=23848

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#3 Trial User_Trial User_Tim__

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Posted 13 March 2007 - 03:54 PM

I already read that before I posted, but there is no system message from alcohol. This is regarding what has happened since alcohol was installed on my pc. My assumption is that part of the process by which alcohol creates a virtual drive caused this problem, and it would be likely that others have had it too. I would like to buy and use alcohol, as it is superior to competitors I have tried, but if it's going to screw up my system I'm not going to use it. Is this not germain to the scope of the support forum? Is there some other forum for people who have successfully installed alcohol but have had side effects to the pc?

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#4 zamiel

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Posted 13 March 2007 - 06:44 PM

Sorry, a System Report from within Alcohol is not optional. To obtain a system report from within Alcohol do the following:

Inside Alcohol --> View Menu --> System Info

Cut and paste what you see there in to a post here. Thanks.

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#5 Trial User_Trial User_Tim__

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Posted 14 March 2007 - 11:39 AM

Oh, I see. Now it makes sense....

System report removed by zamiel

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#6 zamiel

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Posted 14 March 2007 - 01:02 PM

Please try changing the default control interface in Alcohol's options to the Windows one.

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#7 Trial User_Trial User_Tim__

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Posted 14 March 2007 - 06:26 PM

Well, after that change alcohol shows images as mounted quickly after I instruct it to do so, but explorer still locks up when I try to access the virtual drive or if I try to mount an image by right clicking on the virtual drive. The same result occurs if I insert a disk into a physical drive. If I wait long enough (about an hour and a half) it will become loaded and available or if I reboot the computer, the image or disk will be available on reboot, but I can't just mount/insert it and go. Is there something alcohol does to the drivers? Is the way windows goes about recognizing cd's changed?

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#8 Charalambos

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Posted 15 March 2007 - 09:48 AM

If I was in your position I would try a disk check and defragmentation.

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#9 Trial User_Trial User_Tim__

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Posted 15 March 2007 - 06:48 PM

I'm sure my drives are healthy as they are all new in the last two months (upgrade cycle) and I checked for fragmentation level just last week. This problem has existed since the first time I tried alcohol 8 months ago. I've also seen it duplicated on another computer with a competitor's software. This is the only thing that is unusually slow. My programs load quite fast. Not only do disks and images take forever to be recognized by windows, but when I first start alcohol after a reboot, it takes nearly half an hour to finish the "scanning drive(s)" dialog and show available devices at the bottom. All the while the computer continues responding normally in every other way. This has to be a problem with drivers or something with the hardware hash in the registry. Do you know if any drivers are over written when a virtual drive is created? Does it add or change registry entries? Something is slowing down the process even though it eventually works properly. I will continue to investigate on my own. I was just hoping you could shed some light on what alcohol does behind the scenes to system files and registry entries and drivers and such. Any other ideas?