cd rom

Infopackets Reader 'Rose' Writes: " Dear Dennis, My question for you today is: how can I make my CD ROM Drive available to users logging in with Administrator rights only? Here's the problem: my kid brother shares the family computer, which has ... Windows XP professional installed on it. He likes to play online games (which are installed via the CD ROM drive); unfortunately, the games he plays seem to crashed the system. As such, I've set up a separate user account with 'general' user access and have disabled the network card so that he cannot access the Internet when using the computer. Now, ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader 'Cathryn' writes: " Dear Dennis, My computer will not recognize my CD ROM drive (the D drive). For example: when I put a disc into the CD drive, the mouse pointer briefly changes to a CD icon (as it normally does) to tell me -- ... presumably -- that the drive is scanning the disc for its Table Of Contents. However, the CD icon only appears for a split second (when normally it would take a few seconds to read the contents). When I double-click on the D drive to run the CD, it prompts me to 'Please insert disc into Drive D', when in fact there is already a disc in the drive. Can ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sandie 'littleone' writes: " Dear Dennis, Lately I've been having problems with my CD writer drive whenever I try to burn a disc. I get strange error messages which tell me that my computer wasn't able to fill the data quickly ... enough during the burn. I have tried to reinstall the software for the CD burner, but it hasn't helped. Do you have any suggestions for me, other than buy a new CD ROM? Thanks for your input. " My response: The problem you are experiencing sounds like a CD buffer underrun error . All CD burn sessions must be uninterrupted or the resulting ... (view more)

Side note: Because this Visitor Feedback section deals with computer hardware, both the question and answer are somewhat technical. Even if you're a newbie, you should take the time to read this article: I've done my best to outline and explain the ... techy-terms in simple English. Infopackets Reader John T. writes: " Hi, Dennis! I'm sure hoping for your help, if you have the time and are up for a challenge. When I turned my computer on after the recent massive power outage ... I discovered I no longer had D (CD ROM) drive -- it disappeared from My Computer under Windows ... The rest of the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader S. Doe writes: " I somehow inadvertently deleted Windows 98 'Picture Viewer' from my computer. Windows came pre-installed on my computer and I have all of the discs that came with it, and I think Picture Viewer is there somewhere. ... How do I figure out on which disk I can find it to reinstall that program? None of them list it specifically on the disk. Thanks in advance for your help! " My Response: If your computer came with a pre-installed copy of Windows, there is a good chance that the discs that also came with it may only contain a recovery disk image and will ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader David R. writes: " Hi Dennis! A while back, I was playing around with a program and my drive letters somehow got re-assigned. My CD ROM drive (D) became E, and E became F. I am trying to put in a Video input card ... and every ... time I try to do the driver install, the PC says it cannot access drive D. Since Drive D became Drive E, there is no disk in D and thus installation cannot be performed. Is there a way I can reassign the Drive letters or reassign the default CD Rom? I posted this message on the message board at Tech TV and here is the response that I got: ' Do ... (view more)

Today I received an interesting question from Thomas V. in New York. He writes: " Dear Dennis, I would appreciate your thoughts on a problem I am experiencing. Windows Media Player keeps skipping and cutting out intermittently whenever I play ... Internet Radio. The slider is moving, time is advancing, and the readout shows that something is playing ... but I don't hear any sound. I also noticed the same problem some times when I play CDs. Got any ideas? " My response: Off the top of my head, I have a few things that come to mind. Internet Radio suffers from intermittent lulls because ... (view more)