Help needed with Optical Drives

I know someone here will have the patience and skill to help me solve this problem. Asked in 2 other locations but no success yet.

I have several problems but the first one I must solve is this one. In C drive two different optical drives do not see or read the media. Both drives are GOOD! I installed XP in D drive and both work there and C drive if I go to diagnostic mode and nothing checked, they can read the media but auto start CD like XP sp2 from Microsoft does not auto load. That is because something is turned off in diagnostic mode.

One of the common suggestions is to delete the UpperFilters and LowerFilters in a certain registry key. Both those filters and .bak to those keys are missing in both C and D drive. Remember it works in D drive.

Something is blocking the optical drives from seeing the media not sure what but I wonder if it could have been a security update or patch? I uninstalled most of the security software and many of the programs downloaded since last summer.

Not sure what diagnostic program to use or how to use it?? That is why at the beginning I said patience.

C drive will boot from the XP sp2 cd and I was able to start the InPlace Upgrade / Repair at least 4 times. Each time I tried it does not complete. The first crash is when I installed XP on D drive to try the Recovery Console from the CD. The other times after the reboot it would look for other files and not seeing the CD in regular mode I found several but XP could not see them to install them, even on C drive. This has been very frustrating and time consuming!

Over all the PC works well at 80%, but that other 20% really needs help.
Hope to create a slipstream of XP SP2 Cd and SP3 and then try an InPlace Upgrade / Repair again.
Does XP go out and check for updates during the beginning of this process?

Thank You for your help
UncleDoug

Bump…and I’m sorry, can’t help you there.

I knew this might take a while, but that there should be 3 - 4 users in these forums that should be experienced in trouble shooting a PC especially knowing what tools (Free) to diagnose what is happening and then to proceed to suggest repair procedures.

Just wonder how long it will be before one of them posts recommendations.

There are several free tools from SysInternals, not sure which or how to use them.
Also not sure if they would help but also looked at tools like WMIDiag, depends, xphome_test, etc.

A tool that would monitor what software interacts when a CD is inserted in the drive or why a signal stops.
The basic software interaction on a XP Home PC should be the same. Just watching and comparing to see where the break is.

This could take a while, not only because of time constraints, but also because I will not know really what I am looking at. That is why curiosity, and patience will be a necessity with those who will be helping me with the diagnostics testing and repair.

UncleDoug

UncleDoug