More Awesome Than You!

Yesterday when I put my OFB disk into the drive, it wasn't recognised.  I took it out and put it back and it worked.  Today, the same thing happened again and after several tries I had to give up and use my Game Jackal profile (which I tend to avoid now as I've used it so often it takes forever to go through all the numbers).  The disk worked fine on my son's computer and probably would have on my daughter's too, except that's even more poorly than this one insofar as it won't boot-up, apparently because the boot.ini file has been deleted and we have no XP Home disk to get it back, only an XP Pro which won't work.  But that's another problem ...

Anyway ... I tried a disk I'd put some data on and that worked, so did a disk with MP3 files on it, but none of my pre-recorded disks worked, not TS2 ones or any others.  Now, NO disks work.  The drive seems to be trying to read them, but after it's made a few noises it just stops dead.  I've tried using System Restore and various things like that, but nothing works.  The computer is only about 3 months old, so I can't see that the drive would fail that quickly - the ones on my other pc's are years old and they've never gone wrong.  All the other pc's have two, but unfortunately this only has one.  It's called a DVD-RW drive and when I put the details into Google, one link said that it's not really meant for cd's only dvd's (that person's had stopped working, too), but surely they're both the same in terms of playing a disk?

I'm a bit concerned with JM always going on about cd-drives blowing-up, not to mention the fact that the EP that doesn't exist is due out shortly.  I don't want to be without the pc if I can help it and I'm just wondering if there could be some corrupted file or whatever.  I do have a full restore facility, but I don't want to reformat unless I have to.  I know how to share files between the pc's, but I've still not worked out how to delete stuff from one and leave it on the other (if you even can), so I'd have to mess about putting all my neighbourhoods & downloads onto a cd on my son's computer, which would be a pain.

I do have several spare drives I could swop it with, except I've never been inside a computer in my life, plus they're all a horrible creamy-white and mine is nice and black (they'd look stupid on my tower) and I'd invalidate the guarantee by doing that anyway.  I just wondered really if it sounds like the problem is with the drive itself or something that's gone wrong with a file or something.  It seems odd that my own recorded disks worked when the bought ones didn't, which makes me wonder if somehow the drive wasn't recognising something it should have to do with copyrigiht protection or whatever.  Then again, none of them work now, so maybe not.

It does sound like you have something interfering with copyright, sorta.  But I am no computer expert, I'm just basing it on my own lousy personal experience.

I had Daemon installed, and then it wouldn't let me install the game when I had to reinstall.  So after I uninstalled Daemon it all worked fine.  :-\  I'm not saying that's your problem or that deleting it temporarily will fix it, but it can't hurt.

It sounds to me like it's hardware related, not software related.  At my house we've had a couple of new DVD players refusing to play anything within weeks of purchase (and since they've all had a warranty we just keep replacing them) with similar symptoms to what you're describing.  Of course, these were DVD players and not DVD-RWs, and I'm not too familiar with those so I could be wrong.  I'd be more inclined to blame the software if the decline hadn't been so gradual; since it went through of phase of some working and some not I'm inclined to agree that, since it was designed to run DVDs, that the CDs gradually wore out/broke/etc. something.  If you don't get a better reply overnight (my time) I'll run the situation past my dad (a computer programmer and general go-to guy) and see what he thinks.

I had the same problem as you once too, Avalikia and it turned out to be the software for the CD burner.  I took it to the repair shop and they reinstalled that and it worked fine afterwards.

This routinely happens. Copy protection relies on the extreme corner cases of what a CD can do, all of which is inherently outside the specifications for what CDs are SUPPOSED to do. Thus, sometimes they just don't work. And this is why copy protection is a load of bunkus. Also, new "protections" are extremely nosy and try to dictate what you can and can't have even installed on your computer. Just forget about it, hoist the Jolly Roger, and play on.

Well, it's my parent's DVD player(s) so I've not be involved in the whole thing, but I'll suggest that to my parents.

After it happened a few more times, I just did a restore point thingy and that worked too.

Oh, my dad wasn't as asleep as I thought.  Here's a rough paraphrase of what he said:  He also believes that it's most likely a hardware problem.  If that is the case, there's not much you can do but replace the drive.  However, he offers these suggestions:  It's possible that you could find a diagnostic program that will check out the offending drive and tell you if it's still good or not (but unfortunately neither he or I know where you'd find it).  It can tell you if the drive itself is okay, in which case it would be a software problem.  He doesn't think that it's a matter of the copy protection; he thinks that the drive was instead gradually losing it's ability to read different formats, which would explain why it was able to run your recorded disks for awhile but not the others.  He also mentioned that it's also possibly a problem with the drivers, so you might want to check those out.  He also added some fine print about how he specializes in software and not hardware so, while he has an educated guess, it's still a guess.

Well, presuming you mean use Game Jackal, yes I can for now, but what happens when I want to install the furry EP that doesn't exist?  What I am trying to avoid having to do is send the pc away, because without it I will start blubbering in a corner and will need that shrink guy. I'd have to start doing normal things like cleaning the house and talking to people.  It'd only take an hour or so of that to send me completely over the edge.

Oh, another weird thing it did that forgot to mention.  I put the OFB disk in and it did its usual thing of not acknowledging its presence.  I then took it out and put my mp3 disk back in.  It made various stuttering nosies, then up popped all the folders for OFB???  Sounds like a serious delayed reaction, but how the hell did it bring those up when I'd taken the disk out and put another one in?  They wouldn't even go until I rebooted.

Installs don't check CDs, only trying to play the game does. So you'll image the disk and use the image of that disk instead. No sweat. THE DREAD PIRATE ROBERTS LEAVES NO SURVIVORS!

All this talk of pirates is totally confusing me.  I have to install the game from the cd first, before I can use Game Jackal to make a profile, and I won't be able to do that if the CD-ROM drive can't read it.  I don't think Game Jackal can run the game before I've actually installed it, because you have to put the registration number and everything in and set it all up.

I believe JMP is talking about getting the cd image via other means. :)

That actually saved my butt -- I installed Glamour Life just fine, but when it was time to start the game, it just absolutely refused to see the CD in any of my 3 drives (a DVD-Rom, DVD writer, and CD writer).  The disk image that was posted here + daemon tools let me play with my perfectly legal copy. I hate copy protection schemes -- always have and always will.  >:(

The only people negatively affected by copy protection are the legal customers.

Pirates bypass the CP from the start, but people who pay the ridicilously high price also have to suffer with broken merchandise. At least EA Games isn't Ubisoft stupid enough to use StarForce spyware....

There's also the obvious fact that forcing people to study the ways of pirates makes them that much more likely to turn pirate themselves.

Huh? Boot.ini is just a text file which tells NTDetect.com where to look for Windows. You can usually just copy&paste it from another system or write it from scratch.

Most boot.ini files look like this:

Just replace the Pro string with "Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" for the budget version. Or don't, since it doesn't matter at all what is in there unless you multiboot.

Unless your Windows is NOT on the first partition of the first HDD on the first ATA interface, you can use the above file.

Do pirates use CD-Aarrrr? Possibly CD-Aarrrr Doubloon...

OK, we might just be getting somewhere here.  I've done a lot of fiddling about and one of the things I did was download some Nero checker thing.  When it tried to access the cd-drive, it came up with an error message that I'd seen before when all this trouble started.  This is it:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\cmd.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Symantec\S32EVNT1.dll. An installable Virtual Device Driver failed Dll initialization. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application

I hit ignore instead and discovered that the Nero checker thingy said there was no cd in Drive E (there was).  Entered the above error in Google and found a Microsoft page which gave instructions to remove a key from the Registry.  Did this and stopped getting the error.  I then went into the Registry and did a search for Symantec entries and removed them all, except a group it refused to let me delete which ha to do with drivers.  No change to my cd-drive, but the Game Jackal image no longer worked, it kept asking for the cd.

I have now gone back to yesterday with System Restore and Game Jackal is working again, so it seems that deleting either the key relating to the above error, or the other Symantec stuff, has affected it.  Could this possibly have to do with the CD not working?  It seems unlikely as I hadn't altered anything on the pc or downloaded anything, but it seems odd that I can't delete some of the keys, plus I have this Symantec program (Symantec Network Drivers Service) in services.msc that I have no way of removing and it will appear in start-up if I don't disable it ... the strange thing is, I removed Norton Anti-Virus & Firewall at least two months ago and have NO Symantec products on my pc now at all.  Of course, it does come bundled with the pc and is no doubt hidden in the restore files somewhere, but that doesn't explain why it will put itself into my start-up folder if I enable it in services.msc.  It's the word "drivers" that bothers me, because that's what the error was all about.

I've run a virus check and Ad-Aware, but nothing came up with those.  The only thing I can't do is see if the cd-drive is working in Safe Mode because I can't get into it.  Everytime I try, the splash screen disappears before I have chance to select anything and Windows just starts up. 

I've heard of Nero causing problems before.  I just can't remember from where I heard it.  I'm pretty sure it was here.

Found it!  Here you go, Ancient: Here it is! (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,5026.0.html)

And here are a few more:

Here Are a Few More 1 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,4244.0.html),
Here Are a Few More 2 (http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php/topic,3106.0.html)

And, as a footnote, you wouldn't BELIEVE how many generous search results I found.  At least a million.

I don't actually have Nero (the trial ran out), it was just a tool I downloaded today to check the drive with.  I can't remember what it's called because it's gone now as I did the System Restore to the day before.

I still don't know how I am meant to put the non-existent furry EP on without a cd-drive that can read it, but maybe someone will explain it to me s-l-o-w-l-y and with great patience ... or maybe I will just get a new cd-drive.  I still think there's some other problem causing it, but if I do a complete reinstall of XP I'll lose all my files as I can't save anything, unless I mess about doing it via file transfer ... maybe I will try to find a virtual drive online somewhere.  Anybody know of a good (free) one?  The main problem, of course, is whether my GameJackal profile would still work if I reinstalled XP, because if not I'd not be able to play the game at all and I'd go bananas.

Daemon Tools is the standard one favored for use by many.

Supposedly Alcohol 52% has a free version out now, and it's similar to Daemon Tools.  However, since it's not 120% you're better off just using Daemon Tools because Alcohol 52% forces adware installation.

I found that I needed something like CureROM to bypass the SafeDisk protection on the disk, but I believe sd4hide does the exact same thing.

I don't really know anything about hardware other than the basic necessities but I have occasionally had problems with our networked PCs reading the CDs.

It is so nice since I bought GL as an electronic download (wasn't really worth going to the store) and now I don't even have to worry about it.  I trust my broadband connection much more than I trust not having CD problems.

I'm really going to miss starting up with no CD with the never-to-be-mentioned expansion.

Easy to fix -- just do a search here on 'daemon tools' and you'll find many, many threads on how to avoid having to use the CD after installing the game.

I just happened to log into my other account and the CD-drive worked with a CD containing image files.  I took it out and put my OFB disk in, but it wouldn't recognise that and even after I rebooted and put it back in, it still showed the folder for the image files disk.  This is what happened with the other account when it started going wrong.  What is puzzling is that it worked to start with, so I am now leaning very much towards a software problem.

Both accounts are exactly the same insofar as they're both administrator accounts with full privileges.

Does this help anyone work out the solution???  Could the fact that I recently set-up file-sharing with my son's computer upstairs have anything to do with it?  It was working fine after I set it up, though.  I've also noticed that whenever I right-click on the CD-ROM drive, it asks me if I want to write the files to a CD and I get an icon in the taskbar saying there are files waiting to be written to CD.  Could the write & playback functions somehow have become mixed-up?

This is becoming increasingly frustrating. 

Ancient, I totally empathize with you right now, except my problem is with the gameplay, I miss my sims and I can't play, I too am going to seen blubbering in a corner!! :'(

Did you follow this (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ent-security.nsf/529c2f9adcf33a1088256e22005026f1/a22e09c4be40053680256dac00564a18?OpenDocument&src=bar_sch_nam) guide at the (ugly long link) Symantec support site?
Make sure to delete the value named VDD and not the actual key VirtualDeviceDrivers (emulated virtual drives / D-Tools & Game Jackal will use these)


If you know that the Symantec products are present and not used in any capacity, there are a few guides and tools to completely remove all traces of lingering files. (I used to have boot issues with the older anti-viruses suites years back, arg!) I don't think any of the products produced by the company could be directly causing issues with the drive.


There is an easier way I've found to get safe mode guaranteed to load:
Start Menu > Run > msconfig
Select the BOOT.INI tab at the top
Tick the /SAFEBOOT checkbox under Boot Options heading.

Make sure to uncheck the box while in safe mode to return to normal programming.


I'm wondering if the optical drives reading capability is impaired - either that or Windows decided to cache the contents of the disk.
IMHO, at the moment there is nothing to directly associate it with definitely being a hardware or software issue, both appear possible causes.


I would go forward with Avalikia's suggestions - check the drivers and update if applicable.

Do you know the manufacturer and model of the DVD drive?
You can pull the details from Device Manager (Start > Run > devmgmt.msc)

The drive is a HL-DT-ST DVDRRW GWA-4164B.  I tried your suggestion for getting into Safe Mode and it took 10 minutes to do so, the computer just hung after it had loaded a certain file the same as before (Googled it and thousands of people have the same problem).  I was really panicking, thinking I'd never get back in, so I just left the pc and went into another room and it finally made it.  All to no avail as the cd-rom won't work in Safe Mode either.

I do have a couple of questions.  Is the CD-ROM meant to be shown as a removable drive?  I swear it wasn't before, but it is now.  I have 4 other removable drives shown as well, but I have no idea what they are.  I could swear I had more before, but maybe I am just confused.

I also noticed that the location of the CD-ROM is shown as 0(0) in Device Manager - is that right?  Sounds to me as if it might have come loose or something.  It did work briefly when I uninstalled it, but then stopped again.  I'm just wondering if Windows isn't detecting it properly because it's showing as removable when it isn't, but I don't understand all that technical stuff.  Also, not sure if I mentioned it before, but the only option I have in the left-hand panel in My Computer, or if I right-click on the cd-rom, is to "Write these files to CD" - what files???  It's as if it's only seeing it as a writer and not as a player.  It even says this for blank disks and it makes no difference whether it's a CD or a DVD.

Are you referring to listings in My Computer?
Your DVD-RW should be under "Devices with Removable Storage" in group detail view.


The drive being listed as 0 is correct in that it is registered as the master (primary) device.
Are you referring to the drive in question or do you have another CD-ROM drive present on the system?


Oh well there goes that plan. :P

If Safe Mode was successful, it would have proven likely a software issue was present and loading on the core system essentials remedied the problem. There's still possibility on both defected hardware and clashing software (but not with third-party). On to 'Plan B!'


I did a little research digging and think I've found the original manufacturer (LG) and model (GWA-4164B).
The problem with firmware on this drive is that most suppliers customise the model and incorrect or generic firmware can cause more problems.

Did you originally purchase the computer system with the drive as a package and if so, which company (HP/Dell/etc)?

The pc was made by Acer and the drive was included with it (it's not even 4 months old yet).  Unfortunately, things have got worse insofar as I've been messing about so much in the Registry and so on that the Game Jackal image thing won't work anymore, despite several System Restores to times when previously it did.  Don't know if it means anything, but I went into the BIOS and although it shows the drive, it has 0's everywhere (no volume, etc.), although Device Manager still continues to insist it's working properly.  It did work briefly after I uninstalled it, but only very briefly and just for the one cd.

On a different note, I found quite a few Registry backups, but I can't install any of them because it's asking for a password.  What password? I've entered all the passwords I've ever had on this system and none of them work.  These must have been saved automatically and I have never been asked to set a password for anything like this.

If I can't get the Game Jackal thing to work I may as well bite the bullet and try restoring everything back to factory default.  If that doesn't work, it'll have to be a phone call to Acer on Monday.  I just need to find a virtual drive somewhere to store all my files, otherwise I will lose everything as obviously I can't put them onto cd, unless I can work out how to copy them onto the pc upstairs and then transfer them back (so far I've only worked out how to share and if I delete on one pc, it deletes it on the other, which would be a disaster).  Not sure whether the Game Jackal thing would still work if I did that, though.

Chances are the drive has just packed in, it sounds as if it's a pretty crappy one.  Seems a bit unlikely though, the ones on the other PC's are years old and they've never been any trouble at all. 

when you are on the other computer, open the folders that contain all your stuff, drag and drop them onto the desktop or a folder that is located on (the harddrive of) your upstairs pc. You should then have copys of your stuff on the upstairs computer that won't get deleted if you delete the ones on your downstairs one. At the moment it sounds like you are just looking at the shared folders and not copying anything over to the upstairs computer. correct me if I am wrong

That makes perfect sense, actually.  The only drawback is that with my old pc not working, my daughter is using my son's, which has a miniscule hard-drive and I don't think there's even enough free to take my Sims folder, which is a good 5GB.  Maybe I could burn the files straight onto a disk without adding them to the actual hard drive.

Anyway, System Restore has now decided to pack-in on me and has the latest restore point permanently squashed-in with no means of choosing another one.  I am quietly going mad here.  Haven't been able to go into the game all day and am getting withdrawals now.  I've basically run out of things to try apart from reformatting.  I will have to resort to it, because the last thing I want to have to do is send the PC away.

I would certainly try burning straight to disk if I were you, should work. 

I would try reformatting and then if your cd drive still dosen't work then I would try another cd-drive - but I have a brother who I manage to sucker into doing the hardware stuff. I don't think age matters with cd-drives, some just crap out quicker then others. In my (main) computer I have two DVD-RWs... just in case  ;)

Honestly, System Restore has a horrible recovery rate. After all Windows ME introduced it! (sorry, couldn't resist bashing that OS, muawh)

The best method to store configurations and backups is to use a disk imaging program to create an exact reproduction of the state, this can then be stored on a DVD for future preservation (especially good for setting your system up and storing, so next time you can skip a lot of steps).
Acronis True Image and Norton Symantec Ghost are two known products that come to mind.

I'm using a tool called ERUNT (http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/) to backup the system registry, it has never failed me.

I mentioned updating drivers earlier: the following is the firmware software specifically for the GWA-4164B drive.
I could not find any specifically catered for by Acer, so be careful with these drivers.
LG GWA-4164B 1.0 (http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/LG/LG-GWA-4164B-105.shtml)

If you feel a fresh environment is a good idea and you are willing to take the time to manage it, the reformat would be a good option.
A few other options for transferring the files should the home network not be available:

Do you have a secondary hard drive? You can copy the files over quick and efficiently, it also makes a good backup medium.
If you can manage to get the DVD burner working with a spare blank DVD ready, your Sims folder will fit.
CDs have a smaller capacity, but good if you have a pack to spare - make sure to check the files are written correctly.

Try not to panic too much about the situation, the computer has not caught fire... yet. :P

Thanks for the link, I'd already found that and installed it.  I'm not sure what it is, but my driver still shows the exact same date, but I think the file has gone somewhere as I downloaded a utility that seemed to recognise it.  I've been seeing a lot about some sort of codec things (ASPI or something) that have to do with CD-ROMS and this pc apparently doesn't have them.  I downloaded some, but I couldn't get them to go on the pc.  Can't see that it's them though, as it worked perfectly without them before. 

I'm wondering whether to replace the driver files and any other system files that involve the cd-rom, that's something I haven't done yet.  They're all stored on the pc, but the only option I have is to Extract, not copy, so I'm not sure what that's all about.  I will probably just bite the bullet and try reformatting tomorrow and if it doesn't work, I'll just have to put-up with sending it away.  From what I can make-out, the engineers only do home call-outs if you've paid for the extended warranty and I haven't because I got a year's warranty when I bought it and there's still more than 8 months of it left.

Apaptec has a tool to check for the presence of the ASPI layer interface: clickie (http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/speed/software_pc/aspi/aspichk_exe.htm)
ASPI (Advanced SCSI Programming Interface) is related to device adaptors (including CD-ROMs)

The alternative to reformat is to reinstall the OS. This can get messy but no files are removed only system files replaced.
Windows will functionally reload as a new install. You will need to reinstall programs but personal files remain untouched.

I don't have the ASPI thing, that was the tool I meant that told me I hadn't got it.  As for reinstalling Windows, that's basically what it will be doing, but when I did it before it removed all my files.  I don't actually have an XP disk, it comes bundled with the PC.  I do have an XP Pro disk that goes with my son's computer, but I don't think that would work on here as this one uses Home.  Well I know it won't, because I tried it on my old PC once and it didn't work.

Something weird happened earlier.  I clicked on the Logitech Camera folder in My Computer to check what was in it before I removed the Logitech stuff (my son put it on, I don't want the thing!) and for some reason, when I clicked "Play" it made the DVD-RW icon disappear.  Probably just a coincidence, but I couldn't remove the Logitech Webcam software or driver in Add/Remove Programmes, I had to remove the former from the Uniinstall in the folder and I had to remove the driver folder manually.  I don't think either of those is the culprit though, because I rolled back to before they were installed at one time and nothing changed. 

Oh, and System Restore has basically deleted all my previous restore points for some reason.  They were all there right from when I got the PC in May, so I suppose the file had reached its limit or something with all the extra ones I've been doing.  Seems stupid to remove all of them, though.

I had a problem similar to what you described with CDs not being read and the PC displaying the contents of CDs that had been removed from the drive.  I thought I was going nuts because I had the CD in my hand, yet the computer kept displaying the contents even after refreshing.  I could remove the device in Device Manager and have it redetect it, and it would work until I put the next CD in.  My brother-in-law said it was a bad controller on the motherboard.  I was also having problems with my mouse locking up sometimes when the CPU got to 100%, so he recommended a motherboard and helped me install it.  It fixed both problems, but I had to reinstall Windows.  I have two hard drives, and I keep all my data files on the secondary drive with only Windows and programs on C.  That way, if I need to reformat, I can just wipe C and do a clean install. 

I think it sucks that companies won't give you a Windows CD with your computer anymore.  They think they are discouraging piracy that way.  :P  You can still download a CD image of Windows and burn it to a disk.  They haven't stopped people from doing that yet.  We'll see what happens with Vista, though.  :-\

I'm copying all my files onto XDrive at the moment, which is a VERY slow process, but I'm wondering now if I actually need to.  The drive is partioned into two, one (C) and one (D) (100 gig each) and apparently all files on (C) will be lost (that's where Windows is, obviously), but it doesn't say the ones on (D) will, so it sounds as if they'll be OK.  The actual XP files are all on (D) somewhere, that's what it uses to put them back.

From what you've just said though, it sounds as if reformatting isn't going to make much difference.  As for downloading an image, that sounds most intriguing.  Do they work with Game Jackal?  Not that I would use one of course, I am just interested.  Might be the only thing that would get my daughter's PC working again.

You mean Windows or Sims?  Windows images have to be burned to CD because the computer has to boot from it and run the computer from it.  You can't run it from Daemon Tools because Daemon Tools requires Windows to be functioning.  As far as the Sims, you can load a Sims disk image file into Damon Tools (which works like a virtual CD/DVD drive) and install it from there.  To actually play the game, as of OFB, you have to use something like sd4hide to bypass the SafeDisc4 copy protection.  I'm not familiar with Game Jackal. 

I honestly don't understand how the Daemon Tools system works.  From what JM says, I could use it and still play the game without my cd-rom functioning, but I don't know how because surely it would have to copy the disk first and it can't do that if the cd-rom won't recognise it.  He seems to be suggesting that it doesn't need to do that, but I am totally confused as to how it could copy it otherwise.  My Game Jackal profile has stopped working, it keeps asking for the cd-rom, so I can't play at all now. 

Here's a hint (http://www.isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=sims+open+business).

Just thought I'd let you know I'm good at taking hints and also very grateful for them ...

Still don't know how this hint would work with the forthcoming non-existent furry EP if I couldn't install it, though (well, short of downloading the entire thing, that is).  I suppose I'm going to have to get the drive fixed before it comes out, even if it means doing without the PC.  Incidentally, Game Jackal works again now as a result of that SD4 thing.  I had a feeling that's what the problem was, it wasn't hiding the virtual drive anymore (whatever that means).  This other one is much better though, Game Jackal has to go through all the times you've already used it before it will even start, unless you pay for it, which is a pain.  Will keep it though, best to have something to fall back on.

Yes, that's what you do.  Download the whole CD, and load it into the virtual drive.  I did that with Nightlife, even thought I bought it, I haven' t used the disks because I downloaded it and it worked perfectly without having to do the disk hokey pokey.  In fact, I once reinstalled the whole game from the hard drive because I have disk images from TS2 and all the EPs on my secondary hard drive.  It's a lot faster and easier than doing the disk hokey pokey.  :P

Ok, so I'm double posting.  :P  I asked my brother-in-law today about your problem, and he says it sounds like the drive is bad.  He said for $50 you can get a new CD writer, and it's not hard to put in.  I've done a few myself.  Of course, I know yours is under warranty.  He builds his own PCs and builds them for other people for a small fee.  Sorry I don't have better news...I know you hate the thought of sending your PC away.