Hi. I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 that uses a NEC 6100 internal CD/DVD burner.
I run Win XP Pro SP2.

My CD/DVD unit was working fine, but as of a week ago I can no longer access
any files (or see any directory structure) on ANY CDROM or DVD thru Windows.
The volume labels show up, but if I right click D: and select EXPLORE
nothing happens. Nothing happens if i type D:\ in the address bar either-
not even an error message. Device manager lists the CD drive as working
fine. The strange thing is, if I go to a DOS prompt (within windows) and
type DIR everything shows up. Also, I can AUTOPLAY CDs fine as well, in
addition to playing DVD movies.

I did install some DVD copying software, but uninstalled it all. No
difference.

Is there any solution, short of reinstalling Windows XP?

i think your explorer.exe has gone faulty
reinstallthe explorer.exeif you can by copying it fromanother system
with the same versionof windows as yours, do so in DOS mode

or if that ain't possible reinstall the OS

I recently ran into the same problem on my Dell Optiplex GX270. I discovered
that if I opened and reclosed the CD drive that the data on the disk would
be accessible. Give this a try.

"Sabian Smith" <ss_blake@hotremovethismail.com> wrote in message
news:eSE4FfywFHA.2212@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> Hi. I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 that uses a NEC 6100 internal CD/DVD
> burner. I run Win XP Pro SP2.
>
> My CD/DVD unit was working fine, but as of a week ago I can no longer
> access any files (or see any directory structure) on ANY CDROM or DVD thru
> Windows. The volume labels show up, but if I right click D: and select
> EXPLORE nothing happens. Nothing happens if i type D:\ in the address bar
> either- not even an error message. Device manager lists the CD drive as
> working fine. The strange thing is, if I go to a DOS prompt (within
> windows) and type DIR everything shows up. Also, I can AUTOPLAY CDs fine
> as well, in addition to playing DVD movies.
>
> I did install some DVD copying software, but uninstalled it all. No
> difference.
>
> Is there any solution, short of reinstalling Windows XP?
>
>
>

A friend of mine just bought a Dell somethingorother 3000 and after the
inital XP configuration wizard we tried a mixed mode CD which found
(and played) the audio ok but wouldn't show the directory structure
beneath D:\, even though it found and displayed the volume label OK.

So I then tried a DVD+r which I had burned. Again, it showed the volume
label but we could not view the folders. It just did nothing. So I
tried a plain CD-R with files on it and again the same thing.

It would appear the hardware and drivers are fine (device mgr reported
DVD rom was working ok) but then something is wrong at the OS level.
Does anyone know of a fix for these symptoms?

I didn't check cos it was late, but I assume it's XP SP-2,
pre-installed.