disk drives

My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower "F"
is my DVD drive.
My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive as
that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do no
think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each drive and
reposition them.
Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the priorities of
these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E" DVD.
Thank you

Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD.
> The software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E"
> drive as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

Try using the Windows Disk Manager.

Control Panel - Administrative tools - Computer management - Storage -
Disk Managenent.

This will let you set your drives to any drive letter you like. You'll
need to do it in two stages, naming the current E to another letter,
say, "G", then rename the current "F" to "E", then rename the original
"E" drive to "F". This will also work with removable drives, as long as
you name them something high enough in the alphabet.

This may or may not help with your burning programs, though, as they may
be looking for a hardware signature.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 27/01/2012 9:03 AM, Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
> software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive
> as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

It may be that E: is listed as a boot option in BIOS. Go into BIOS, and
see whether the F drive is listed by brand/model name. If so, make it
the 2nd or 3rd boot device. That fixed the problem on my system.

HTH
Wolf K.

Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD.
> The software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E"
> drive as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

There are so many questions you could ask in this case.

One thing is, things like a "Nero Lite" that comes with
the purchase of an optical drive, the software may be keyed
to look for that particular brand of optical drive, and the
software may choose to ignore the other drive. If you buy the
retail version of the software, it may instead choose to work
with all the drives. (I'm a cheap bastard, and so I've used
a few different Lite versions that come with the optical drive.)

Windows 7 has IMAPI Version 2 support, and that means the
OS has a certain level of support for DVD burning. It means
if you buy a third party program, it doesn't have to work quite
as hard, and maybe, it doesn't have to install UpperFilter
drivers like on older OSes. (I have no idea what this means,
except to suggest the reuse of ancient burning applications
might be counterproductive, if they do things to the OS that
are no longer necessary.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_Mastering_API

To give an example of that, if I do a test install of iTunes
on an older OS, Apple installs the GearSoftware (third party)
burning stuff. But on Windows 7, iTunes no longer installs
GearSoftware, because the Microsoft built-in capabilities
are apparently enough to get the job done.

Some applications are notorious for trashing burning
capabilities, and I really wouldn't know where to start,
except to start Googling the names of the software you've
installed. You don't even need to be using the program - a
bad program can mess things up by just being installed.
Take the list of optical burning software you have installed,
and start your Googling...

*******

To double check your assumptions about the hardware, you can use
Nero InfoTool. It's free as far as I know, as it can be
downloaded from Nero (and Eric Deppe the author, also used
to stage it on his own web site). I presume these are a couple
different versions, with the bigger one being new as of Dec. 2011.

ftp://ftp6.nero.com/tools/

InfoTool.zip 29622 KB 12/1/2011 12:32:00 PM
InfoTool.zip_ 1700 KB 9/29/2008 12:00:00 AM

I use an older version, and I can't promise how the various
versions I see on there now, would compare. This particular
picture is ancient, but at least you can see the tick boxes
showing optical drive capabilities. And when you place blank
media in the optical drive tray, you can go to the "disc" tab
and see Nero read the disc information. This tool helps confirm
your assumptions about drive type. Occasionally I run into
someone, who didn't check that first.

http://majorgeeks.com/screenshots/n/neroinftool.gif

*******

Microsoft makes tools to repair optical drive capability, but
the problem I have with this approach, is whether it does any
collateral damage or not. A tool like this, may selectively
remove UpperFilter registry entries for the optical drives
(effectively undoing the evil that one of the burner software
installers did). But then, you'd have to go back and test them,
to see which ones of them were busted. So while this may be convenient,
I prefer to understand just exactly what went wrong in the first
place. But if you're desperate, and not good at Googling, this
is an option (a "convenient hammer").

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/cd...rive_problems/

Paul

Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
> software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive
> as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

You got a little typo in your post. E drive is CD, F drive is DVD. But
then you say:

>The software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E"
>drive as that for DVDs.

Not a big deal, I make typos all the time! You mean the software doesn't
recognize the F drive for DVDs. Now that we got that out of the way.

Is the DVD drive a "burner" or just a "player"? What happens when you
put a blank DVDr disk in your DVD drive? Does your software recognize it
as a DVDr drive?

It might help if you tell us what software you have to burn DVDs. You
say you have "several." Most commercial DVDs, like a movie, won't let
you copy them.

--
JD..

Thanks John, I have tried your idea first as it was the easiest; sadly it
did not help. The 2 drives appear on "My Computer" with the amended letters
but the drive disk for DVDs is still being selected as the CD one and not
the DVD one.
I shall try the other suggestions later.



"John Williamson" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Stewart wrote:
>> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
>> "F" is my DVD drive.
>> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
>> software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive
>> as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
>> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do no
>> think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each drive
>> and reposition them.
>> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the priorities
>> of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E" DVD.
>> Thank you
>
> Try using the Windows Disk Manager.
>
> Control Panel - Administrative tools - Computer management - Storage -
> Disk Managenent.
>
> This will let you set your drives to any drive letter you like. You'll
> need to do it in two stages, naming the current E to another letter, say,
> "G", then rename the current "F" to "E", then rename the original "E"
> drive to "F". This will also work with removable drives, as long as you
> name them something high enough in the alphabet.
>
> This may or may not help with your burning programs, though, as they may
> be looking for a hardware signature.
>
> --
> Tciao for Now!
>
> John.

Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
> software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive
> as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

Check in Win Explorer how the two drives are named. If the descriptions
don't match the hardware, then uninstall both and reboot; and check the
new descriptions.

If that's worked try your burner software to see if it screws them up again.

Ed

Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD.
> The software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E"
> drive as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

Changing the drive letter won't help.
I use Nero 6 store bought (imo, 6 is the best Nero made).
It gives me a choice of what I want where.
My Nero 5 came with the Yamaha burner and branded to that drive.
It sees the Asus as a cdr only. The Asus came with Nero 8.
It thought the Toshiba dvd was cd only.
I don't like 8 at all. 8 is terrible bloat-ware and I
deleted it.

On 1/27/2012 8:59 PM, Paul in Houston TX wrote:
> Stewart wrote:
>> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the
>> lower "F" is my DVD drive.
>> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD.
>> The software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E"
>> drive as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
>> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
>> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
>> drive and reposition them.
>> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
>> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become
>> "E" DVD.
>> Thank you
>
> Changing the drive letter won't help.
> I use Nero 6 store bought (imo, 6 is the best Nero made).
> It gives me a choice of what I want where.
> My Nero 5 came with the Yamaha burner and branded to that drive.
> It sees the Asus as a cdr only. The Asus came with Nero 8.
> It thought the Toshiba dvd was cd only.
> I don't like 8 at all. 8 is terrible bloat-ware and I
> deleted it.
With this situation, it might be necessary to poke into Nero, and find
the drive related data for each version, and merge the data.

On 1/27/2012 9:03 AM, Stewart wrote:
> My desktop has 2 disk drives; the top one "E" is CD only while the lower
> "F" is my DVD drive.
> My problem arises when I try to burn a movie to a DVD or copy a DVD. The
> software I have (have several) does not seem to recognize the "E" drive
> as that for DVDs, they keep trying to select the "E" CD drive.
> I could open up the computer and try changing over the cables but I do
> no think that they are long enough so I would have to take out each
> drive and reposition them.
> Does anyone know if it is possible from the BIOS to change the
> priorities of these drives and make the current "F" DVD drive become "E"
> DVD.
> Thank you

Let me ask what I think is an obvious question: why do you still need
the CD drive? If you got a DVD burner, it'll do everything that the CD
drive does, and more. Why not disconnect the CD drive and see what
happens after that? If you're thinking of copying movies, then most
software will copy the image to an intermediate location on your HD, and
then burn to the same optical drive.

Yousuf Khan