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I have had a recurring problem on my Windows 7 Home, 64 bit laptop. Whenever I eject a CD, the HDD spins and the system is unresponsive for as long as 20 minutes. If I don't want to wait, I have to do a hard reset to recover.

There are no events in the system log, Resource Monitor shows nothing unusual, just System, svchost running. As far as I can tell, there is no I/O occurring, just a spinning disk and unresponsive system.

The bios and all the drivers are up to date as is the OS.

It's an Optiarc DVD+-RW AD-7640S ATA Drive

I have searched until my fingers bled trying to figure this one out.

Any ideas, troubleshooting advice?

TIA

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2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I would suspect first to blame would be any CD/DVD burning software you have installed. Try these steps:

  • Boot up into Safe Mode (tap F8 key repeatedly when system is at the BIOS screen and a menu will pop up). See if the issue occurs in Safe Mode.

  • If it doesn't happen in Safe Mode, try removing your CD/DVD burning software and see if it persists.

If it does happen in Safe Mode:

  • I'd try booting a WinPE or Linux live distribution from USB to see if it the issue occurrs within a different operating system environment entirely. If it still does it could be a BIOS problem (unlikely, but try updating BIOS) or a hardware issue.

  • If it does not then something is wrong with your Windows installation (didn't the Sony rootkit cause behavior like this?) and the easiest thing to do is reinstall your operating system.

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Thanks man. I did the safemode dance already to no avail. I will try removing the burning software. I hadn't thought of DRM. I do have 1-2 from some games. Buggers. I am really trying to avoid re-installing. :-( – mike fratto Jun 13 '11 at 12:58
Finally got back to this. Yes, I had been installing CD burning software. I removed all of it except and the problem disappeared. I should have removed them one at a time to see if there was a particular one causing the problem. – mike fratto Aug 2 '11 at 13:20
up vote 0 down vote

You can try these:

Especially the second one is very popular.

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Thanks, but the CD is available and works. It just didn't work properly. the first answer worked for me. (remove DVD burning software). – mike fratto Aug 2 '11 at 13:21
1  
Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. – Luke Aug 7 '12 at 23:47

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