W7 Sees Data Mini-CD as BLANK

Hey All,

W7-64 Ultimate on an Acer Aspire 4530 -- for some reason the system reads mini-CDs as blank and asks to format them. This is very annoying since most devices ship their drivers on these minidiscs. The drive reads standard size data CDs fine. It is a drive with a central spindle, so it's meant to read mini-CDs.

Yes, I can usually find drivers elsewhere online but like last night it took me several hours to track down the driver needed on a Czech site when the CD was right here but I just couldn't read it. I did later check it in another computer with Ubuntu, and the disc reads fine so it's not the disc. Some component, driver or service in W7 is not working, or maybe it's a reg key. I recently ran sfc /scannow and it found no errors. The DVD player in the Acer has the newest firmware and the system is fully patched and up to date.

I have Googled this extensively but there doesn't seem to be an answer. I did find a MS article on a similar problem which involved deleting the Upper and Lower filters from this reg key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} ... but my reg key did not have U/L filters in it.

To be clear, I'm not looking for a workaround like using another machine, but to fix the problem and gain the ability to read minidiscs. Any help would be appreciated!!

 

It is the OS that has the ability, though. Since W7 should be reading it fine, something is amiss. The drive is not at fault. If I boot from a Live Linux distro it reads it fine.

I only wish someone knew the driver, device, reg key, program, whatever in W7 that allows it to read miniCDs.... it has to be different from whatever allows it to read standard discs, as it reads a standard CD fine. It can't be the chipset driver b/c my Toshiba also cannot read a miniCD, and I migrated this W7 to that machine so I wouldn't have to build my system twice. Yet that exact Toshiba with Unubtu (which I also have... yes 3 laptops) reads the miniCD fine too.

So again, it's my particular instance of W7/reg/something that is problematic.

 

@cocachris89: Creative suggestion, but not looking for a workaround. Am looking to fix the problem.

@budzos: No firmware upgrade available.

@ PhaseDoubt: I never had an occasion to use a mini-CD until a few months back when I ordered a device that came with the driver on a mini-CD. It didn't work then, and it didn't work the other day again, which are the only 2 times I tried.

You're right this machine was sold with Vista with an offer to upgrade to W7, but it has all the W7 drivers installed. Restore points are all from recent cases. sfc /scannow shows no errors, so I don't think a W7 Repair would do anything, and I try to avoid Windows' automated solutions as they never work in my experience. I prefer to manually find and fix problems whenever possible. It's safer.

The drive is new(ish) as the old drive stopped reading discs (any disc) last year. So I replaced it on Black Friday with the same. Samsung generic OEM SLIM drive ... I have the model and SN and checked already for any updated drivers or firmware. The drive reads every other kind of disc fine.

But it's not the drive, it's the OS. I know this because I migrated the W7 OS from the Acer to my Toshiba laptop to avoid having to build my system twice, and that Toshiba also will not read mini-CDs, though I have a duplicate Toshiba laptop with Ubuntu installed and the miniCD reads fine there.

So again, I can get to the files by using my Ubuntu laptop, but I am looking to fix this. Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

 

The problem was simply duplicated on the migrated system (proving it was an OS problem, not a drive problem), but I was speaking of the source system, which is the Acer, the computer I work on daily.

IAC I think I know what caused it... I have several burning/ripping applications as one program is good at one thing, another program, at another. I believe that one of these programs or a combination of two or more in conflict created the problem that caused this... likely a registry conflict or something along those lines.

I could uninstall all my programs to test my theory but I use the programs while I rarely have need to read a minidisc. So as much as I'd like it fixed, it isn't worth troubleshooting it anymore at this point. I will never personally use a minidisc for anything, it was mainly the principle of the thing... it SHOULD work so I wanted it to. But it's not the end of the world.