DVD Drive won't play DVDs, weird context menu

Question

My DVD drive no longer recognises DVDs correctly, and I'm not sure how to correct this.

On startup, Explorer displays the drive as DVD Drive (E:) overlaid with a "DVD" label (I have 2 hard disk partitions, C: and D:)
However when I insert a blank (writable) DVD-R, the icon is displayed as CD Drive (E:)

Right-clicking on the drive icon results in an slight pause, then Explorer displays the context menu, in which all the entries are indented to the right:

Double-clicking on the DVD icon (which I would expect to launch Windows Media Player) instead causes Explorer to display the drive contents, so I just see a heading "Files currently on this CD", and underneath this is the icon for the VIDEO_TS folder.
If anyone's interested, the drive is an HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H31N.

This is not a hardware problem: I can play DVDs in the drive using mplayer:

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device e:

...can play the DVD just fine; but Windows can't.

Before anyone asks: No, I don't have a restore point from before this started happening, so I can't just revert the system.

Because of the context menu appearance, I think there's some driver or shell extension disrupting things.
I've had a look at the Filter Drivers, thinking I need to remove something, but I'm not sure what should be there, and what shouldn't.

Can anyone offer any ideas for diagnosing this problem?

Update 2010-08-26

I've removed upper and lower filters, as instructed in this Microsoft Support article, and the Roxio Drag-to-Disc reference has been removed from the context menu along with the left-indentation.

However, note that the context menu does not have the usual Open/Explore/Search entries.

When I double-click on the icon, I get the "Copy CD to CD" behavior, and Explorer shows "Files currently on the CD".

Answer 1

Your context menu looks like it's just broken from an overly-wide icon. I'm guessing the line that has the little disc and reads "drag to disc" is at fault. It looks about the right wrong width and appears to be an image, not necessarily text (I could very well be wrong, but the font looks different).

If you can play the DVD using a different program, it seems that it's not your DVD drive but Windows Explorer that is making the mistake. Connected with the context menu, I'd say try removing a few of your disc-related tools (just temporarily) and see if the issue clears up.

To fix the double-click opening the folder, you may need to re-associate the DVD folder type with Windows Media Player. I can't remember off the top of my head how, so you'd need to Google, but if you know the menu that pops up when you insert a disc or flash drive, you'll need to select open in WiMP and set that as the default option.

Answer 2

Well, after uninstalling various Roxio junk, and still finding that the DVD drive appeared as a CD drive, here's what steps finally fixed things.

The basic problem was that other CD/DVD utilities had removed the redbook and imapi filters, so the drive wasn't recognised properly.

I also had various ElbyCDFL and other LowerFilters from gawd-only knows where.

Merging this registry file restored the imapi LowerFilter and the redbook UpperFilter, which restored the DVD-RW functionality.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}]
"Class"="CDROM"
@="DVD/CD-ROM drives"
"EnumPropPages32"="MmSys.Cpl,MediaPropPageProvider"
"Installer32"="storprop.dll,DvdClassInstaller"
"SilentInstall"="1"
"NoInstallClass"="1"
"TroubleShooter-0"="hcp://help/tshoot/tsdrive.htm"
"Icon"="-51"
"LowerFilters"=hex(7):69,00,6d,00,61,00,70,00,69,00,00,00,00,00
"UpperFilters"=hex(7):72,00,65,00,64,00,62,00,6f,00,6f,00,6b,00,00,00,00,00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000]
"EnumPropPages32"="storprop.dll,DvdPropPageProvider"
"InfPath"="cdrom.inf"
"InfSection"="cdrom_install"
"ProviderName"="Microsoft"
"DriverDateData"=hex:00,80,62,c5,c0,01,c1,01
"DriverDate"="7-1-2001"
"DriverVersion"="5.1.2535.0"
"MatchingDeviceId"="gencdrom"
"DriverDesc"="CD-ROM Drive"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\DigitalAudio]
"RegistryVersion"=dword:00000001
"NumberOfBuffers"=dword:00000008
"SectorsPerRead"=dword:00000010
"SectorsPerReadMask"=dword:ffffffff
"CDDASupported"=dword:00000001
"CDDAAccurate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001]
"EnumPropPages32"="storprop.dll,DvdPropPageProvider"
"InfPath"="cdrom.inf"
"InfSection"="cdrom_install"
"ProviderName"="Microsoft"
"DriverDateData"=hex:00,80,62,c5,c0,01,c1,01
"DriverDate"="7-1-2001"
"DriverVersion"="5.1.2535.0"
"MatchingDeviceId"="gencdrom"
"DriverDesc"="CD-ROM Drive"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0001\DigitalAudio]
"RegistryVersion"=dword:00000001
"NumberOfBuffers"=dword:00000008
"SectorsPerRead"=dword:00000010
"SectorsPerReadMask"=dword:ffffffff
"CDDASupported"=dword:00000001
"CDDAAccurate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002]
"EnumPropPages32"="storprop.dll,DvdPropPageProvider"
"InfPath"="cdrom.inf"
"InfSection"="cdrom_install"
"ProviderName"="Microsoft"
"DriverDateData"=hex:00,80,62,c5,c0,01,c1,01
"DriverDate"="7-1-2001"
"DriverVersion"="5.1.2535.0"
"MatchingDeviceId"="gencdrom"
"DriverDesc"="CD-ROM Drive"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0002\DigitalAudio]
"RegistryVersion"=dword:00000001
"NumberOfBuffers"=dword:00000008
"SectorsPerRead"=dword:00000010
"SectorsPerReadMask"=dword:ffffffff
"CDDASupported"=dword:00000001
"CDDAAccurate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0003]
"EnumPropPages32"="storprop.dll,DvdPropPageProvider"
"InfPath"="cdrom.inf"
"InfSection"="cdrom_install"
"ProviderName"="Microsoft"
"DriverDateData"=hex:00,80,62,c5,c0,01,c1,01
"DriverDate"="7-1-2001"
"DriverVersion"="5.1.2535.0"
"MatchingDeviceId"="gencdrom"
"DriverDesc"="CD-ROM Drive"