Problem with phantom DVD Drive

[mattstan]

Hi,

Win 2000 Pro - Fully up-to-date.

I've a phantom DVD Drive which I think is causing problems with my real DVD Re/Writer.

Basically my NEC DVD drive works fine with CDs but when I insert a movie DVD I'm told there's nothing in the drive, even with DVDs that worked in the past.

Device Manager tells me (in 'DVD/CD-ROM Drives') that I have a 'ZE3506G VEZ242R SCSI CdRom Device' but this drive does not exist, and I've never had a SCSI drive DVD/CD or hard disk installed on this system.

I can uninstall the phantom drive and remove it from 'Computer Management -> Removable Storage' too, and when I did this last week my DVD drive started recognizing DVDs again. The PC's been on and working fine since then (not off or re-booted at all), but I rebooted today, and the phantom drive came back. Now it seems it comes back after every re-boot, and the DVD drive won't recognize DVDs even when the phantom is manually uninstalled.

The only change I made to the system before my problem started was to connect my mobile phone using a USB cable, and installing Nokia PC Suite. I uninstalled this as well, but I've also noticed in Device Manager under 'Disk Drives' that I have a new entry: 'Epson Stylus Storage USB Device', I have a USB Epson Stylus printer connected to the same USB that I removed to attach my mobile phone, but it is not a 'storage device' and shouldn't be listed under 'Disk Drives'. A mobile phone though could be considered a storage device, since mine allows music, etc, to be uploaded to it. When I uninstall 'Epson Stylus Storage USB Device' from device manager, which is sucessful, a dialog then pops up straight away saying:

"Completing found new hardware:
generic volume
an error occurred during the installation of the device
the data is invalid"

When I reboot the 'Epson Stylus Storage USB Device' comes back like the phantom DVD drive.

HELP, I don't know what to do !!

Many thanks.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Not sure about the error however what you can try doing is uninstalling it, then running a registry cleaner and removing all keys.

http://www.download.com/Eusing-Free-Registry-Cleaner/3000-2094_4-10658410.html?tag=lst-0-1

As for the dvd rom and the burner, make sure the burner is set as master and the dvdrom as slave if they are on the same ide. Burners usually like to be master for some reason.

There is a point in wisdom and knowledge that when you reach it, you exceed what is considered possible - Jason Schoon

 

[mattstan]

Thanks for the advise. The reg clean seems to have solved the USB device problem. I can't stop the phantom DVD drive from re-installing itself after a re-boot if I've uninstalled it, master and slave are correctly configured already. However I've a temp. fix by disabling the phantom drive. I'm fairly sure my only real solution is a clean OS install, but I'll procrastinate on that for a while, cos it will take so long to re-install all my software.

Cheers.

 

[Lemon13]

did u install any virtual-drive software like daemon-tools or nero?

 

[mattstan]

did u install any virtual-drive software like daemon-tools or nero?"

Yes. Nero is on my system, but I only used it's virtual drive facility for an ISO image a few times, that feature has been disabled for a long time. I also have PowerISO which has been used semi-regulary (1-2 times a month) but it is always switched off in between uses with the number of virtual drives set to 0, and it does not have any memory resident component or service that's always on (neither does Nero).

These programs always created a new drive when turned on that disappeared when turned off. Could they be responsible in some way for my phantom SCSI DVD/CD drive?

Many thanks.