The Problem
I used to be able to write CD’s directly from Windows XP by ‘sending’ files directly to the drive and then ‘writing’ the CD. One day this stopped working and all I got when trying to write the files was “there is no disc in the drive” message. However, other CD-writing programs still worked so the CD-RW drive was not out of order. What was going on ?
After judicious googling I found two items of interest.
Registry
Firstly, the properties of the CD-RW are held in the registry in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CD Burning\Drives
The values for this key are
1 – CD-R Drive
2- CD-RW Drive
3- Just a CD
So make sure this value is 1 or 2.
Mine was set to 3 so I changed it to 2, however, the drive still would not write CDs.
Security Settings
Next I found an article about Local Security Settings. Goto to control-panel->Administrative Tools and open “Local Security Policy”. Click the “Security Options” item and look for item “Devices: Restrict CD-ROM access to locally logged-on users only”.
I disabled this and…voila I can now write CDs from Windows.
WARNING
I am not convinced that it is correct to disable this item but I needed my CD-RW working again !