Disable CD drive Spin Up in Explorer

Infopackets Reader Rich V. asks:

" When I open Windows Explorer or have to select a file location from within a program, there's a long delay as Windows forces my CD ROM drive to spin up in order to view contents of a disc. Is there any way to disable this somehow, still use the Auto Run feature, and force a spin up when I explicitly select the drive? "

My Response:

As far as I know, a disc must be scanned at least once so that Windows "knows" what is contained on the disc -- and to check it for an Auto Run feature. Spin up can take place any time Explorer is initiated. If you don't want the disc to spin up, don't put anything in the drive that would cause it to load.

I used to own 2 CD changers that were able to hold 4 CDs at a time. Whenever I clicked on MY COMPUTER under Windows, I had to sit and wait for both CD changers to read all 8 discs -- one at a time. I would have to wait 3 minutes for the entire process to finish.

To stop this process from happening intermittently whenever Explorer is loaded, I used a CD buffering program which held the CD label names resident in RAM. Unfortunately, that was a while ago and I can't remember the name of this program... perhaps there is something better today that would stop label and content scanning of discs completely?

Know the answer? Email me.

Update 2003/02/05: This article has been updated. Click here to read!