I accidentally deleted Roxio CD Creator and Record Now and lots of other burning cd programs and now can't find my disks that go with my external Pacific Digial CD/DVD drive. The light won't even come on and Windows doesn't recognize what's on that USB port. It wasn't even showing up in the device manager until I downloaded a file that restored CD-Roms and DVD's to Explorer from www.dougknox.com. It did something and now it shows up in the device manager with a yellow exclamation point but the light still does not come on.

What do I need to do. Is there any free software out there that will work with this? Do I need a driver? Not too knowledgeable about things but can get around the computer.

Thanks,
Michele

Support Information:
Device Type: CD / DVD
Manufacturer: Pacific Digital
Model: A749C5 external
Interface: USB
Operating System: Windows XP Home
Age of Device: < 2 years old
FCCID:

Type of drive: cd-r (cd-r burner &amp; cd-rom)
Location: external
What recording software are you using?: Other (Other: CD Burner XP)

Find it on DriverGuide (http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?action=srch&sm=b&aax=&qa6=1231&qa5=3&qa7=1500&dp=2&qm0=A749C5+external&jmd=and&fzz=d) | Find it with Google (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Pacific+Digital+CD+%2F+DVD++A749C5+external+Wind ows+XP+Home+) | Research manufacturer Pacific Digital (http://members.driverguide.com/index.php?action=getinfo&companyid=1231)

External USB optical drives never require a driver when used in Windows XP.. the OS provides native support that allows this drive to read a data or music disk and to burn a cd-r disk. Anything else requires compatible 3rd. party recording software (like Roxio or Nero) . This device is plug and play if you plug it into a working USB port.

First, you'll need to totally remove/uninstall all recording software, then never install but ONE burning application. Not only will you need to uninstall the program(s) but you'll also need to clean all registry entries pertaining to the burning application(s). Once done, then before installing any burning application, check to insure the drive will read a data or music disk to check to see if it will READ ok. If it doesn't then you must fix the problem before you install any burning software.

And btw, the Doug Knox fix is to automatically remove the upper and lower filters in the registry.... after doing so, then the drive should be listed in My Computer and work properly. If it doesn't then you most likely have a defective drive.

Well finally got it to work. I downloaded xp_cd_dvd_fix.vbs from www.dougknox.com. Ran that and it deleted some registry things because it restores CD-roms and DVD's to Explorer. Then it showed up. But then the power light wouldn't come on. My friend pulled hard on the rubber parts and opened it up and, walla, there is an internal drive in there. So we hooked that up internally and it worked. And he had a Nero Express disk and we installed that and it works great now. Probably didn't even need the Nero stuff, any burninig program would have worked. I guess my problem was there was too much stuff in my registry mainly stuff like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\system\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\CDr4_2k
and three other keys it deleted. Took 2 seconds to run that little program and it then recognized my drive.

Thanks for your help. Michele