Sometimes while I try to read defective CDs or DVDs Windows (95,98, NT, 2000, XP) hangs and become unresponsive, sometimes even to CTRL+ALT +CANC, continuing to try to read the disk forever, so that I have to reboot (loosing my unsaved data!) to regain the control of my PC.
Is there a solution to this problem? does Vista still have this problem?

"Luca Villa" news:1178218313.734765.258460 y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com

Are you sure they are defective discs? As do they work in other drives? As the majority of the time, this is a sign of a flaky laser and/or drive.
Bill

Luca Villa wrote:

The solution is to not try and read defective disks. This is not operating system-dependent. What *is* operating system-dependent is what Windows often does to the data transfer method - drops it down to PIO - when there are errors. See MVP Hans-Georg Michna's explanation and fix for that:
michna.com/kb/WxDMA.htm
Malke Elephant Boy Computers elephantboycomputers.com "Don't Panic!" MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

"BillW50" wrote in news:OfNihXbjHHA.3708 TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl:

Also, it could be an AV app scanning a huge file on the CD/DVD which may appear to hang Windows.

What problem? This'll happen sometimes. See what Malke said. :-)
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] rgharper gmail.com * NEW! Catch my blog ... msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/ * PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups * The Website - rgharper.mvps.org/ * HELP us help YOU ... dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
"Luca Villa"

I presume it because: 1: the CDs I'm trying to read are masterized 5 to 8 years ago and if it's true that the average life on a CD is 3 years they must be atleast very probably partially defective 2: my drive can read some files from them, and hangs on other files trying to read them continually (I presume from led and noise...) 3: my drive can usually read new masterized CDs without problems

Can't be. I actually don't have any AV installed and they are all video files.

Sometimes I have important data on these disks that I want to try to recover and sometimes I don't have near to me an electronic microscope and a spare bionic brain to analyze the disk for defects before inserting it in my CD reader and trying to read it ;)

I don't think so. I remember that in MS-DOS I always got the Abort, Retry, Ignore when CRC errors in CD reading occurred. It never hanged on CD reading or atleast I don't remember it.

And does dropping down it to PIO normally implies that Windows hangs?

Interesting. Now I read it. Thanks!

I read it fully. Very interesting but I don't understand a thing: isn't it sufficient to change the Transfer Mode from "PIO Only" to "DMA if available" in Secondary IDE Channel Properties - Advanced Settings?

On 3 May 2007 15:12:35 -0700, Luca Villa wrote:

As lame as it sounds, you can often read some CDs on one computer, but not another. I've burned CDs that would only play back on the PC that created them. I burned others that would play back on any player EXCEPT the one that created them. I burned CDs that wouldn't play, after repeatedly trying, then played fine a few weeks later on the same machine.
If all else fails two things you can try:
Try to copy the contents use the old DOS copy command from a command prompt. I've done this with some degree of success. Usually you don't recover everything, but enough to make the attempt worth the effort.
If the data you're trying to get is really important one of several of the electric CD/DVD cleaner machines actually DO work... sometimes. I picked up a Memororex OptiFix Pro for maybe $20 or so at Fry's and while it didn't always work it worked enough to pay for itself.

"Luca Villa" news:1178230355.735053.207400 o5g2000hsb.googlegroups.com

CD-R should be just fine, CD-RW maybe questionable.
Bill

Luca Villa wrote in news:1178230496.538813.310370 n76g2000hsh.googlegroups.com:

Fair enough, but you can keep in mind it still happens.

Bad CD or bad laser reader is not relevant to the problem.
The fact is that you don't know if a CD cannot be read from your system before you *try it*. And when you try it, if CD cannot be read, in some circumstances it hangs your entire system while the CD reader continues to try to read it (irregular LED and noises...). You press CTRL+ALT+CANC and (if you're lucky) the task manager opens showing about 50% of your applications as "Not Responding". You hope that these come back to life because you have important unsaved things in them (like a Photoshop drawing or a notepad window with an unsaved text) so you wait some time but the Not Responding pass from 50% to 80%. You try to remove the CD and the caddy opens. CD is removed. Yeah!! You think: I'm lucky, now Windows resurrects. Some other seconds and 80% become 90%. You try to kill a process and BANG: task manager hangs! you try to close it but it remains there, hanged. The mouse moves. You try again CTRL+ALT+CANC hoping for the miracle and nothing happens. You press CAPS LOCK, BLOCK NUM and BLOC SCORR and the keyboards leds doesn't respond.
When you think to a solution, start from here :)
I bet you all had a similar problem in your life with Windows. The question is: is there a way to avoid it in future? does DMA instead or PIO really avoid that Windows hangs in these circumstances?
PS: please avoid stupid answers like "pass to Linux" or "don't try to read defective CDs nor use defective CD readers". You know that they're not interesting.

On 3 May 2007 18:55:15 -0700, Luca Villa wrote:

Nothing new, Windows has always been this dumb. Apparently no Microsoft programmer ever figured out what eject or stop means. Just more proof while Windows is suppose to be the operating system it never really is in full control of anything. It's the same thing when you try to stop a "not responding" application from Task Manger. You can wait and wait and if lucky maybe a minute or more later Windows finally wakes up.

There isn't any I found. It is just part of "wow" of using Vista.
Wow... I can't stop something, Windows won't let me. Wow... this is pile of junk. Wow... I paid $200 for this kind of torture.

Kicking around in my mind I seem to remember reading somewhere way back that some calls to a CD/DVD player use smoke and mirrors to read/write, which explains why everytime you update the OS, you usually also have to update your CD/DVD burning software too because the old "hacks" that worked in the old OS have to be revised to hack the newer one.

"Luca Villa"

Nero has a tool at CDSpeed2000.com that tests discs... cdspeed is the name of the tool. If you hold down the left shift key when you insert a CD/DVD, autoplay is ignored. You might try downloading cdspeed, installing it (well, there's no install... it's just a standalone exe, so unzip it...), inserting the CD/DVD while holding down the left shift key (longer than just when the drive bay closes), and then run cdspeed to test the disc. I usually use the read test to check if a disc is defective or not.
Good luck,
Lang

On Thu, 03 May 2007 18:55:15 -0700, Luca Villa wrote:

actually a similar thing happens in Linux. I believe it's called a 'zombie process' but I forget. the system blocks on some hardware device and won't let go. I've only ever encountered it with cd drives. the process cannot be killed.
I am not sure any PC operating system can recover itself but anyway it is familiar on the Linux side.
Felmon

Lang wrote:

Thanks for the info but there are two problems: - I don't like to loose 20 minutes to test the entire CD/DVDs surface with CDSpeed2000 before inserting any CD/DVDs, to prevent the problem - I don't even know if CDSpeed2000 doesn't hangs Windows when it encounters the same circumstances

"Luca Villa"

Well... If you prefer losing x number of minutes because Vista locks up instead of at least trying to test the media... that's your choice. It doesn't take 20 minutes to test CD's here, but I could see it taking that long if you're working with old media that may only be 2x.
Good luck,
Lang

This was posted by Wesley Vogel (MS-MVP) on 4th May under the subject "Problem deleting or renaming files":
"Avi files have a bug in XP. XP thinks that it has to read through every avi file every time that you open a folder that contains any. You also get the locked file in use when trying to delete, rename, move, etc. avi files.
See this on the fix.
How to get rid of "Locked AVI" Bug in Windows XP riccardo.raneri.it/blog/eng/index.php/2006/04/28/how-to-get-rid-of-locked-avi-bug-in-windows-xp/
The only down side to the above fix is that when you right click an avi file and select Properties, the Summary page will be blank or grayed out. Which I decided was a lesser evil than some of the other problems .avi files cause."
HTH, ern.
"Luca Villa"

ernie wrote:

I must have been cheated out of this bug. I have a few30 .avi files under My Documents/My Videos/AVI/xxxxxx.avi.
"People say Microsoft paid 14M$ for using the Rolling Stones song 'Start me up' in their commercials. This is wrong. Microsoft paid 14M$ only for a part of the song. For instance, they didn't use the line 'You'll make a grown man cry'."

I give you the bad news that changing the mode from PIO to DMA (DMA mode 2) for my CD-ROM player didn't prevent the problem to happen. It's just happened a second time, in this mode.