Dell 4550 DVD and CDRW Lost Drivers

[batemantech]

This is already fixed but just had a question for advice on it. I had a customer the other day that had been without her DVD drive and CDRW drive since Jan. I went and looked and both drivers were gone and she remembered we had a storm before that and there electric went out. Well I checked out microsoft and they had a utility that supposedly fixed it. So I did this and behold the drivers were installed again.

When we tried the drives the dvd still did not work and the cdrw read once and that was it. So I figured I would try rebooting with cd and sure enough they both worked. Luckily she didnt need anything off there so I just reformatted with her dell and she was happy.

My question is would there have been anything else to do instead of wiping her hard drive out and reformatting. I looked on google and using the Microsoft utility was one of the ones I saw to do besides reformatting.

Thanks for taking time to read.

 

[computergeek1]

I would of took the computer back to workshop, took out CD drive and tested it on the test computer, if it come back okay, i would of reinstalled the cd drive and went to the manufactors website for the drivers. and then tried that, i would be aware that this customer does not come back as you may have fixed the problem but the problem could come back again, as when there is a sudden power off from the electric it can damage the computer and there might be a problem with the motherboard.

 

[studiot]

There's something you are missing out here because RW writers were not native to Windows at the time of the 4550.

So your client must have had third party software, usually from Ahead (InCd)or Roxio (DirectCD) for Dells.

 

[batemantech]

Yeah but for a drive just to read a plain CD you do not need the rewrite software. Windows wasnt communicating with the drive itself. Once windows was reinstalled everything was fine. Microsoft had a utility for fixes like this but the utility didnt work. It just masked it.

 

[angry_geek]

Remove the upper filters in the registry. This is an old issue and is all over google. Also, you could have tried a new burner. $40.00 for a new burner is cheaper than $125.00 for a nuke and pave. In the event of a power surge or lightning strike, every component in the machine should have been tested for damage. Next week her video could go out, and she will blame you since you last worked on it. I think you are in the right place to learn, but you really need to work on your diagnostics.

 

[batemantech]

The thing is everything works fine now that I restored the system so I would have put more costs on the customer replacing the drive when the drive is good. I read a couple places on google where they had to do the same thing. I was trying to save time and cost for the customer trying to fix it with simple driver reload or the tool that microsoft had. In the end it just took reinstallation of windows. Customer has had no problems and happy everything is working now. All she wanted to do was view pics of her Las Vegas pics cd which she can do now. Thanks for all the input on this. Just wondered if anyone has ever ran into something like this before.

 

[studiot]

+1 on the filters
+5million on the diagnostics procedure
+1 on look at google first.

I'm really keen to understand this new form of English you seem to practice in NYC.

 

[studiot]

Remove the upper filters in the registry.

You don't even need to go to the registry to do this. The 4550 was shipped with XP and these settings are available within XP.

Just wondered if anyone has ever ran into something like this before.

Yes indeed, which was why I originally asked my question.

I had one client with a 4550 that I worked on many times over the years. Amongst other things it suffered motherboard burnout from a lightning strike that blew the ISDN through the wall.
It did display the CD problem twice. Deleting the filters worked on one occasion but not on the other. The second time the user has installed conflicting software (Itunes, Nero and Roxio). It was only till one was uninstalled that I could get the drives working again.
I also seem to remember that the beast used RAMBUS RAM.. Uggh.

 

[iptech]

I'm really keen to understand this new form of English you seem to practice in NYC.

It makes sense to me and I agree with the sentiments. I was going to post a detailed response earlier on the filters issue which might have been a little more informative than "the tool that microsoft had" but when I saw the pearls of wisdom offered up by poster #2 I decided not to risk it lest I be again accused of questioning anyone's technical ability.

I'm increasingly wary of posting anything on this board these days, it's becoming something of a fools paradise.

 

[theFakeGeek]

Remove the upper filters in the registry. This is an old issue and is all over google. Also, you could have tried a new burner. $40.00 for a new burner is cheaper than $125.00 for a nuke and pave. In the event of a power surge or lightning strike, every component in the machine should have been tested for damage. Next week her video could go out, and she will blame you since you last worked on it. I think you are in the right place to learn, but you really need to work on your diagnostics.

I've seen this problem many times. For future people reading the forum:

1. Open RegEdit (Start>Run> Type “regedit”)
2. Navigate to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}”
3. Delete the “UpperFilters” value.
4. Delete the “LowerFilters” value.
5. Restart the computer.
6. You might need to uninstall then reinstall any burning software you may have (Nero, iTunes, etc…) do this now.

From my site: theFakeGeek.com