I had to troubleshoot a computer running Vista Home Premium. When trying to read a CD, Vista just prompts me to format/erase it for use, although the CD is not actually blank.

I thought of disabling cd burning via gpedit but Home Premium doesnt have it. I tried disabling it from the registry but it didnt help.

Any ideas? (BTW I am no longer with the computer so I cant test the solutions immediately)

Try looking at the CD with something like isobuster, see if it has any issues (multisession discs sometimes cause problems). Maybe it's a CD burning app that screwed something up. Or perhaps it's burned in a format that isn't supported without addons (e.g. UDF 2.5).

Hard to guess. Never had the problem.

My computer does that also, but it is because there is a problem with the drive. It thinks all media is blank (hence games, apps and movies won't play) but it can burn properly which is kinda confusing cuz after it ejects when finished, it can't read what it just wrote...

Same problem here. Drive works fine in XP, but in Vista it sees every cd as blank, and it's not a burning format issue, as it does it on all cd's and dvd's including purchased cd rom's. I have to go to Run and type the CD Drive letter and click Browse to get around it.

Same problem here. Drive works fine in XP, but in Vista it sees every cd as blank

Very strange. I've only ever seen that problem on XP, and it was due to some program interfering (close it, and it worked fine).

grab the model number of the CD-burner in question, check the web to see if there is a firmware upgrade available for the device

I have also seen this problem in Vista in another configuration. Any computer with 2 Lite-On dvd burners in it... Although, sometimes it does work.

I wonder if this could have something to do with the problem... (It also applies to Vista)

GL

Have just had exactly the same problem with a colleague's Vista Home Premium comp.

After several attempts via windows explorer, the drive will read the DVD, but at the bottom of the right hand pane is:

Files ready to be written to CD (& it is always desktop.ini)

Delete the file & the drive behaves as normal (except Autoplay does not work as requested via Control Panel - Autoplay options).

He had been burning a CD with Roxio, prior to the problem, so I'm guessing the CD had not been finalised & had left a unanswered request.

Hope someone has a better solution?

Regards,

Max.

Don't let Vista mess with burnable media. Its got a weak burning system anyways. Use Nero or CDBurnerXP or ImgBurn.

I had this issue but mine was due to Nero InCD.