Vista - refusing to recognise disks in drive

Factual Questions
1

I’m running Vista on a new (read: less than one month old) PC.

I tried to install Vampire: The Masquerade today.

Disk 1 ran fine. When I put disk 2 into the drive, it came up with an error saying some sort of map file couldn’t be found. It wouldn’t let me ignore the file it couldn’t find, so I cancelled the installation.

Once the installation was cancelled, I put disk 1 back in the drive. Then my DVD drive refused to read the disk.

So I took it out, tried a Diablo II disk. Same problem. So I took that out and tried a music CD (no DRM music CD). Same problem.

So I shut down and restarted. No joy.

Shut down again, leaving a music CD in the drive this time. The drive spooled up as the PC rebooted, but once back in windows it was still telling me there’s no disk in the drive.

So I ran “update drivers”. No joy.

Put in my windows Vista CD. Didn’t change a thing.

Shut down the PC and rebooted - at reboot, with the Vista CD still in the drive it gave me the “Boot from CD/DVD” prompt. With a press of the any key, it took me into the windows installer. The drive is not physically busted.

So I cancelled the windows reinstall, removed the CD and rebooted windows again. Back in the OS, still the same problem with booting any CDs up at all.

I have Steam with a few games installed, I have F.E.A.R and I have WoW. I have Neverwinter Nights II and Daemon tools to run it, as it’s a copy of the game that my husband has.

What the hell do I do to get my DVD drive reading CDs and DVDs again?

2

Nevermind - it appears that even though sources were saying not to remove the drivers, removing them and turning off Daemon tools appears to have fixed the drive issue.

3

Yep, Bloodlines doesn’t like Daemon. It doesn’t care about other virtual drive programs from what I can tell.

4

For it to nerf my whole DVD Drive? That’s a bit harsh.

5

No, not blaming it on VTM, it sounds like another issue, maybe Vista. Some programs might not be compatible, I see Daemon was updated in August, 4.10 is newest version, while VTM hasn’t been updated since 2004. Do you have any other virtual drive programs that might be conflicting, like Nero or Alcohol 120%?

6

I have got Nero too.

Ah well, all’s well that ends well. VtM is working/installed. Daemon’s turned off for now. If it happens again I’ve got an idea of a starting point. I’ll probably be buying my own copy of NWNII sometime soon anyway, so I shouldn’t need to use Daemon again.

Grrr. Hate, though. There’s that moment of panic when you’re kind of like “Lord, this PC is brand new. Why is it broken?!”

7

Glad you got it solved fairly easily. FYI optical drives are some of the most cheaply mass produced pieces of crap you might ever come across. They have the most moving parts of any PC component thus most prone to minor mechanical failures.