The inspector scans all optical drives that are connected to the PC to display detailed information about each of the discovered devices.

This ranges from basic information like the vendor and drive letter to advanced information like the device’s firmware, serial number, region code, read features and, if it is a writer, writing features.

The information can be used to determine a device’s capabilities, handy to troubleshoot issues and before buying blanks or media.

But the information can also be used to verify that the manufacturer did indeed add the right CD, DVD or Blu-Ray drive to the PC.

VSO Inspector displays all devices in a pulldown menu at the top. The software comes with additional interesting options.

A Check for Firmware Update button is displayed at the bottom of the application. A click on the button triggers a Google search for “download device model”.

Media can be inserted into the drive to check its type and compatibility with the selected device.

The Scan tab can run a surface scan and file test on a disc with data that is inserted into the drive. VSO Inspector can scan all disc sectors or only specified sectors. The speed, time remaining and percentage of good, problematic and erroneous sectors is updated constantly during the scan.

VSO Inspector reveals all relevant information about connected CD, DVD or Blu-Ray readers and writers. The software program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. A downloaded is offered at the VSO Software website.

Some Windows users on the other hand experience problems with their CD and DVD drives that have nothing to do with this feature. Microsoft describes the problem the following way:

Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or not recognized by Windows or other programs, so you cannot play or access a CD or DVD. This issue might have occurred after you installed, uninstalled, or updated a program or Windows Vista.

This is a generic description. Users who scroll down on the Knowledgebase page find details at the end of the page:

This issue may have occurred after one of the following situations:

• You upgrade a computer to Windows Vista or install Windows Vista Service Pack 1.
• You install or uninstall CD or DVD recording programs.
• You uninstall Microsoft Digital Image.

You may see one of the following error messages: One of the following error messages appears when you view the CD drive or the DVD drive in Device Manager.

• Error message 1 – The device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (Code 31).
• Error message 2 – A driver for this device was not required, and has been disabled (Code 32 or Code 31).
• Error message 3 – Your registry might be corrupted. (Code 19)
• An “error code 39″ error message.
• A message that resembles the following appears in the notification area:
  Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41)

Users should check the CD drive or DVD drive in the Device Manager before they apply the Fix-It solution.

The Knowledgebase article offers instructions on how to manually fix the issue as well. Windows 7 users can use the Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu‑ray Discs troubleshooter (link), while Vista and XP users have to edit the Windows Registry.

No word out yet if Microsoft will develop a patch to fix the issue permanently.

There are several reports and support requests in the search engines that describe problems with CD and DVD drive recognition in Windows 7 and other Microsoft operating systems. There is unfortunately not the one solution to fix all of the issues with CD DVD drives but a good start is Rizone’s CD-DVD Repair which is a portable software program that tries to fix missing or unrecognized CD and DVD drives in Windows 7 and other Microsoft operating systems.

The application comes with two additional options to reset the drive’s autorun settings and to protect the CD DVD drive against autorun parasites. A click on the Repair CD-DVD button will initiate the repair of the drives. It will also apply the two additional options if they have been selected by the user.

A restart of the computer system is required to complete the operation. Rizone’s CD-DVD Repair may not be able to repair all issues that are encountered by users. It is sometimes necessary to download new drivers or even update the firmware of the drive to make it compatible with Windows. A link to a website that is collecting firmware updates is given in the program interface as well.

It is usually a good idea to visit the manufacturer’s website first to see if there are driver or firmware updates for the CD DVD drive and apply those before running CD-DVD Repair.

CD-DVD Repair is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be downloaded by the developer’s website.

The question now is if there is a way to lock the DVD drive in Windows Explorer. Locking meaning that it will not be accessed in any way when a user opens Windows Explorer, a file browser or any other means of accessing files on his computer system. Ideally the program should be able to determine direct DVD access and allow that from happening.

The only viable solution so far is to create a disk image of the DVD in the drive and mount it using a software that emulates CD drives. This is however not a perfect solution. It would be much easier to have a on and off button for the DVD drive or a program running that would automatically perform the operation. Actually there is one additional solution which would involve removing the DVD from the drive whenever it is not needed and putting it back in whenever it is needed.

Question is: Do you know of a program that can lock the DVD drive so that the DVD will not be accessed when accessing Windows Explorer?

Optical drives are sensible and can break easily if enough pressure is applied. CD / DVD Drive Locker puts an end to this fear by locking selected optical drives of a computer system. The software program is easy to use. Just select the optical drives that should be locked and move them to the list of locked drives with the click of a button. Unlocking works practically the same.

While kids – or more specifically parents – are the main target for the application it might also make sense under other circumstances. Could be useful to lock the optical laptop drive to avoid that the drive opens accidentally.

Credit goes to Instant Fundas for finding the application. They missed to include a link to the application though. CD / DVD Drive Locker is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 2000.

Virtual CloneDrive is a software that emulates up to eight virtual CD and DVD drives on the system. Each appears in Windows Explorer with its own drive letter and the user can perform the usual operations such as installing software from or exploring the CD or DVD that has been mounted.

The software works by adding two new entries to the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer that only appear when right-clicking a virtual CD drive. That makes mounting and unmounting new images overly complicated. I liked how Daemon Tools provided a system tray icon that could be used to mount and unmount images easily.

Several popular image formats are supported including iso, dvd and img but it does not support all the image formats that were supported by Daemon Tools Lite.

The software has a low computer memory consumption while it is running. It used up only 3 Megabytes of computer memory while emulating one virtual drive. Raising that number did not have a huge impact on the memory consumption.

The application had to be started again to add or remove virtual CD drives from the system. Mounting and working with those CD and DVD images on the other hand was uncomplicated. The application lacks an interface that is accessible while using it. It would also be nice to be able to mount images by right-clicking them or loading them from the program’s interface. Currently the only other option available is to assign the file extensions to Virtual CloneDrive so that a double-click would mount them.