Here, take a look at this and let me know what you come up with. You will NOT find better assistance than this man offers.
>Alright. I am calling in the cavalry.
YEEEhaaa!
>All Discs treated as Audio:
Usually that's bad disk/drive... seems "when in doubt, assume audio"
is the fall-through. Or, suspect something fiddling around in the data
stream from the drive, e.g. CD emulators, packet writing, and broken
DRM from media pimps.
>
http://forum.kgii...eated-as-audio/0/>If you don't mind taking a look I would be much obliged. You can
>reply there as a guest if you'd like - there is no need to join
That's nice; I don't like having to choose between:
- remember 50 pwds for 50 forums
- use same pwd on 50 forums; crack one, become "me"
>but you will have to pass the CAPTCHA to prove you are a human.
Fair 'nuff, I have a plug-in that automates that for me... ;-)
>You can also reply in here and I will post any/all responses given over there.
>Please? *chuckles* I have NEVER seen anything quite like this - and
>searching doesn't show me anything that I am certain can be used as
>the fix other than what I have already suggested. *sighs*
If you're up against DRM, you're up against professionally-written
malware that it may be illegal to study or remove. Basically, that
is the ultimate form of "commercial malware"
Now, let's read this thing.... yup, above applies...
Firstly, a bad drive would not affect both drives equally, and I'd expect
variable mileage - e.g. brand-new CD-ROM sometimes works, a dirty
CDRW usually fails outright, etc.
There are two drives, so that points away from one drive having the
sort of error that is not variable, e.g. not able to find the start track
or whatever.
I'd state-chart this:
- normal (expect to fail)
- Safe Mode (expect to pass - else chase drivers e.g. Via 4-in-1)
- MSConfig startup suppression
- MSConfig suppress non-MS services
- NirSoft Shell Extension Viewer; reversibly disable, carefully
When doing MSConfig suppression of non-MS services and startups,
best to stay offline to be safe, in case defenses disabled!
Win9x is different, as there's no optical drive support in Safe Mode
because Win9x in Safe Mode "runs on DOS" with no native awareness
of optical drives. In fact, presence of DOS drivers under Win9x GUI is
a likely cause of these sort of problems.
For something to break both drives, you'd expect it to be in the
controllers, drivers or the OS's device category handlers. It's
unlikely the controllers would go bad without impacting the HD,
but it is worth trying different IDE channel and Master/Slave
combinations. Try not to lose Product Activation "lives"; I'd do
a baseline WPA Info (Licenturion) and back off if you're on your
"last pucman" (i.e. 3 lives lost already)
CD drives generally do not have "special" drivers in Win9x GUI
(unless you've left DOSware underneath) or NT/2k/XP.
My top bet would be something interfering with CD data flow,
such as the things listed earlier. DRM is very likely to screw
up here, as this is a likely DRM intrusion point.
By "CD emulators", I mean things that treat HD volumes or
subtrees as if they were CDs, so you can "play" the CD
without having to have the disk in place.
BTW, just how deep does this "everything looks like audio"
go? Is it just that the audio player pops up when disk is
detected? Or if you explore via Windows Explorer, do you
see lots of .CDA files and nil else? (De-lamer Explorer to
test, i.e. show hidden and system files, don't hide file name
.ext, etc.). If you play a ".CDA", does it successfully play
like an audio track, but sound like digital noise?
Another possibility; failure of the handler to refresh the
view of the drive when the disk is changed. Suspect this
if every disk has the same number of audio tracks, varying
only after you've changed initial disk and shutstarted WIndows.
Finally a "duh" head-slap; is there a pending copy of material to
be burned by XP's native CD writing? If so, you may see the
same ghosted shortcut files on every disk that is inserted,
but they should be added to what is otherwise there and
more plainly visible.
As it is, his problem desc suggests .CDA files always, and
no "real"files seen as present.
This is given by Chris Quirke.
Note: You may find his responses a bit above your level (don't be alarmed nor egotistical - I find some of his responses WELL above my level at times and this is what he and I both do for a living) so take them in bite sized chunks. One by one... In your case, check and let me know - specifically - if they are in .CDA format when you see them.
I am going to read what he wrote and take a huge stab in the dark and ask... "Do you have iTunes installed?" Various media players? Hmm... Anyhow... Read and then re-read what he had to say. Trust me when I say you will NOT get greater help anywhere than what he offers.
