DVD Drive not recognized by Sonic and Win MCE

Question

I have a Dimension 8400 with Windows MCE, with the Philips 8631 DVD drive.  I've had all the usual problems with it, so I cross-flashed it to the Benq (thanks to whoever posted that info), and had better success.  I had also asked Dell support for help, and they had told me about removing the Upperfilters and Lowerfilters in the registry.  The burner works fine with my Pinnacle Studio, and also with Windows Medial Player 10 - BUT - Sonic no longer recognizes the drive as a burner, and Media Center (which has burning capability) has the same problem.  Both keep asking me to attach a burner.  Everything else appears normal in Device Manager.  I wonder if both are either looking in the same place, or if MCE is somehow linked or depends on Sonic for the burning capability.   Any help anyone can offer would be much appreciated.

osprey4 · Answer

Did you reinstall these applications after flashing the drive?

Thornhill99 · Answer

Thanks Osprey. Last night, I completely uninstalled Sonic, then reinstalled from scratch. I did NOT install Sonic DLA ... and after that, Sonic seemed to at least recognize the drive. I then reflashed the drive over to a Benq, and it still recognized it. I'm going to put it through its paces tonight. Also, I'm going to check to see if Sonic went in to the registry and put those Upper and Lowerfilters back in - I'm wondering if that was the reason this happened to begin with. Also, I'm going to check to see if Win MCE can find the drive too.

I'll let you know what happens ...

Thornhill99 · Answer

Well ... it turns out that after reinstalling Sonic, it put the Lowerfilters back in (no Upperfilters) ... and I had trouble burning again with my other software (Pinnacle Studio).  I suspect that if I take out the Lowerfilters registry value, Sonic won't find the drive again ...   I'm going to call Sonic tomorrow and see what they have to say about it ...

osprey4 · Answer

Of course, if you remove either upper or lower filters, you must reinstall the program.

Storage, Drives & Media

Was this post helpful?