This Good Boot is for a bit beyond Novices only

This Good Boot is for a bit beyond Novices only.

If after upgrading to Windows 7 or after you install or uninstall applications that have a CD/DVD filter driver your CD, DVD and/or Blue-ray drive does not work as expected or you receive an error message “No compatible drives found” it may be because the filter drivers in the CD/DVD/Blue-ray storage stack are not migrated successfully to Windows 7, you uninstalled software that fails to properly remove itself in the registry, you installed software that adds filter drivers in the CD/DVD/Blue-ray storage stack that interfere with existing filters or for that matter, perhaps just a simple Murphy’s Law glitch.

If your technician is on vacation or otherwise unavailable I suggest your first attempt at resolving the problem yourself should be to click the Start button and Control Panel. Click Troubleshooting and then in the left pane click “View all” and “Playing and Burning CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray Discs”. The troubleshooting Wizard may solve your problem.

If not try the following.

Note: As this solution entails modifying your Registry I suggest you create a Systems Restore and/or a Registry backup.

1. Type regedit in the Start Search box and then click regedit in the Programs list. Or if you have added “Run” to your Start Menu click “Run” and type in Regedit and click OK.

Note: To back up your Registry when you arrive at the Registry Edit pane, click File, Export, give the Registry backup file a name and Save it to a My Documents subfolder.

2. Locate and then click on the little triangle to the left of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. You’ll see a list of subkeys. You’re looking for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.

Be sure you’re in the appropriate registry subkey before modifying the UpperFilters and the LowerFilters values. To verify you’re in the appropriate registry subkey, make sure the (Default) data value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class data value is CDROM.

3. In the right pane if there’s an UpperFilters and possibly a UpperFilters.bak entry, right click on them and click Delete. Click Yes to confirm their removal.
4. In the right pane if there’s a LowerFilters and possibly a LowerFilters.bak entry, right-click on it and click Delete. Click Yes to confirm their removal.

Exit Registry Editor and restart your computer. Hopefully you’ll be back in business.

Although editing your Registry my sound a bit intimidating if you’re careful, deleting UpperFilters and UpperFilters.bak and LowerFilters and LowerFilters.bak is not really a big deal.

Here’s wishing you a Good Boot.