Problem with Sony DVD Writer & ROM

[Mantorok]

The drives work wherever I place them as long as both are not plugged in together (As soon as the new one is plugged in it kind of sucks out the life of the old one). This is weird...

The PC is a Sony RC202.
It does have Roxio installed however.

Edit:
I just bought a new DVD ROM drive and replaced the old one (so its 2 new drives now). Then everything works as it should.
Somehow the old / new combination seems to be incompatible. How can that be though?

[clocker]

Somehow the old / new combination seems to be incompatible. How can that be though?

Who knows?
Hardware/software incompatability is just a mysterious fact of life- you're lucky your fix was as cheap and easy as it turned out to be.

[lynx]

The drives work wherever I place them as long as both are not plugged in together (As soon as the new one is plugged in it kind of sucks out the life of the old one). This is weird...

Ah, you must have Sony Vampire drives.

The PC is a Sony RC202.
It does have Roxio installed however.

I suspect (but can't prove) that there's something basically wrong with the combination of Roxio software and Sony drives. I had a Sony drive, I upgraded the firmware and the system refused to boot (even into safe mode) because of an incompatibility with a driver (part of DirectCD on W2K) which M$ had installed in conjunction with Roxio. Disabling the driver was the only solution, and it wasn't easy.

The drive stopped working not long after that with problems identical to those you mentioned in your initial post. Do I believe it has some connection with Sony's root-kit type of software? You betcha.

The result is that I haven't touched anything to do with Sony or Roxio since.

[Virtualbody1234]

Just curious. Why do you need a DVD ROM drive when you have a DVD burner?

[clocker]

I suspect (but can't prove) that there's something basically wrong with the combination of Roxio software and Sony drives...
The result is that I haven't touched anything to do with Sony or Roxio since.

Since last summer I've seen issues similar to this with Dells that come preloaded with Roxio software.
The last one (just yesterday, in fact) did have two Sony drives but I honestly can't remember if the previous ones did.

The fix (workaround?) involves editing the registry to remove the "upper and lower filters" (whatever the fuck they are) that Roxio (I believe) installs.
This completely solves the problem of drives not being recognized or Windows being unable to load drivers (so much for PnP, eh?).

That said, I too avoid Sony parts like the plague and have never seen this problem occur with Nero software, so I'm leery of Roxio as well.