jontyy

Decided its a fundamental problem with OS. The call with MS didn't happen again due to staff illness. But meanwhile I found I can't install Win7 SP1, and can't "turn windows features on or off" - tried all the fixes and no dice. I am concluding that my registry has got messed up, possibly due to using Registry Clean in CCleaner (attempting to remove traces of Nero). So, I'm going nuclear and installing everything from scratch on a newly formatted drive. Thanks for your support and suggestions, and for a very efficient and non-intrusive software in Imgburn. In case this can help anyone else, here were the original symptons: - Adobe Encore, trying to build a DVD by burning onto DVD: on the Build tab = Destination / Recorder / None found - right-clicking drive in Windows Explorer and looking at properties - drive thinks its a CD-ROM drive - drive unable to burn CDs or DVDs onto any blank discs - Windows 7 troubleshooter concluded that drive is unable to burn discs / DVDs / CDs. OS thinks its a read-only CD-ROM drive - Imgburn reported in log file: Initialising SPTI, CreateFile failed, Reason access denied - explored all avenues desccribed above such as Upper and Lower Filters etc - Imgburn able to burn using ElbyCDIO so proved hardware is OK

Update - just to say that the call with MS hasn't happened yet, it had to be postponed by MS and should happen tonight.

P.S. Are there any potential compatibilty issues of using ElbyCDIO ? I often have to burn DVDs and send them to folk all over the country. If I use ElbyCDIO is there a higher chance someone's DVD player or computer can't read that disc (compared to using SPTI)? (It's not a full solution, as I also need Adobe Encore, which isn't recognising the "non-SPTI" drive, but I might have to use in the interim)

Thanks v much for your further time on this. I've got rid of Nero, it took some time to do that. Before I killed it I had manually gone into the Burn rights section and granted full rights to all. The poikosoft looks very much like a front-end interface for the SecPol.msc setting that all Users can access CD-ROM - I've already set that manually to the recommended setting. Yes, I can confirm that I cleared the filters from the registry and they are empty in Imgburn look-up. I have tried that MS fix, and a further MS trouble-shooter which told me that the drive isn't capable of burning DVDs! I have a call booked tonight with the second-tier of Microsoft support, so fingers crossed ...

Thanks for the suggestion on rootkits, it seems they are indeed nasty things. But before I go down the nuclear option (since I've tons of installed programs, settings and related data on this drive - we are talking days to recreate from scratch), might there be anything else to try? My thinking was just that if its a sophisticated rootkit, would it bother disabling SPTI alone, or rather stay quiet and plan something more juicy for its masters. Also, I believe this all started with Nero messing with my burn rights. Are there any other registry settings or access issues to explore, or any other theories to test?

Thanks very much for the reply and suggestions. DMA - removed all controller entries under IDE ATA/ATAPI in Device Manager, and re-booted. No change to behaviour (possibly interesting that although icon in lower menu bar said devices were ready to use, the progress box for ATA 1 remained at "scanning for preconfigured drivers"). Logfiles - from Win7, showing first ElbyCDIO success then SPTI problem: Logfile from XP (via Hiren boot mini XP); Unlocker and Lockhunter: on right-clicking the drive in Explorer, both initially said "locked by explorer", this was then cleared by the software, but no change to problem. Safe Mode - no change, problem remains Virus - scanned with Eset and Malwarebytes, no outstanding issues.

This is not a problem with Imgburn, but from 10-15 hours hunting around the net, it could be an issue for a few others out there, including Imgburn existing users and new converts (like me). The Imgburn forum seemed the best place to raise it, as it's thanks to Imgburn logs and functions that I've narrowed it down as much as I have. I have an LG BD-RE BH10LS30 DVD drive on Windows (Win 7, but seems this problem goes wider than that). "All of a sudden" I can't burn anything - can read fine, but writing is not possible. Tried several DVD authoring / burning / blank disc permutations. The clue I have seems to be the log when I start up Imgburn, because it tells me "CreateFile Failed; Reason: Access is denied .... You need Administrative privileges to use SPTI". The things I have tried are: 1. Upper and Lower filters in Regedit - there aren't any. 2. Created new accounts, normal user and new admin user - no dice. 3. Secpol.msc - changed "grant access to CD/DVD drive to active user only" to Enabled, as recommend on a few forums 4. Reset DMA as per Imgburn FAQ, apparently there is no DMA to reset on my machine (its purely SATA, no IDE) After beginning to suspect the hardware I finally disproved this, as by switching to ElbyCDIO under Imgburn I/O settings, I can indeed burn a DVD. It's taken me a day and a half to get this far, even an hour's call to Microsoft didn't help. I found the SPTI error a few times on the net, but always either with one of the solutions above, or ... without a solution. By the way, the thing which might have changed "all of a sudden" was using Nero 10. I remember some kind of notification about "burn rights". I have subsequently removed Nero (no mean feat, using Revo Unistaller), and will not be going back there again. One final measure is that I have done a fresh (upgrade) install of Windows. Does anyone have any thoughts, please?