Can't read my own CD-R or DVD-R's anymore

[soopytwist]

I just tried to access some files on an old data back up DVD but Windows 7 won't let me open the disc, it just says "Application not found".
Under the disc name it's got UDF. I can read the disc on my old PC with the drive that probably burnt the disc in the first place but it was definitely finalised at the time.

Thinking it was a one off I just checked a random selection of old back ups from 2003, 08, 09 and some more recent ones I can't read them either. In fact I don't appear to be able to read any DVD-R's or CD-R's at all.

I used to keep back ups of games I bought on Steam but I stopped doing that when I realized I didn't really need to do that. And for general data back ups I use external HDD's now anyway, but I still want the data on these discs.

And I just tried opening a music CD, one I made of my own music and I can't open that either yet it plays in iTunes and WMP. It says CDFS under the name in My Computer.

The drive is a cheapo Super Writemaster, given to me when my Pioneer DVD/CD-R/RW started to fail (though it's still going strong in my old PC and reads ALL my discs without a problem). The Writemaster runs games okay and retail music albums just seems to have a problem with discs that had data burnt to them.

I don't know if it's the drive, my motherboard, an update to Windows 7 or what (my old PC has Windows 7 on it too and reads all the discs fine).

[RB]

I'm not certain it will help but I had a similar thing happen with my multi card reader. It suddenly refused to mount cards despite the USB port on it working fine.

I unplugged it and put it on a different header and when windows booted it reinstalled drivers for it and all was well. I even tried it back on the old header and it worked again there too.

Try a different SATA/IDE port.

[soopytwist]

Okay, we now have a more serious problem. After trying to read a variety of CD-R's and DVD-R's I just discovered I can't open ANY discs at all from My Computer (or just "Computer" as it's called in Windows 7, but calling it "Computer" makes no sense). So basically ANY optical disc cannot be opened from the device list, autorun doesn't start either. For example I've got Tomb Raider disc in at the moment in MY Computer it just says DVD-RW Drive (D:) 0 bytes free of 7.73 GB UDF.

If I right click, click Run Autoplay then Open folder to view files in the AutoPlay window I cn open the disc content and run and setups or copy data or whatever. This goes for those old back up discs from like 2001 etc.

Was fine maybe a week ago, dunno. Apart from Tomb Raider I haven't used any other optical discs for a while so I don't know how long I've had this problem. After installing Tomb Raider I took the disc out and out it away because it's on my Steam account now.

Maybe a borked Windows update? I don't think the drive's faulty because I can still read the disc contents, albeit in a round-about sort of way.

[soopytwist]

Try a different SATA/IDE port.

Thanks RB, that seemed to work. I swapped the drive to another SATA3G header and it's working fine now. No problems reading discs again! So what the heck was all that about? Like you say it'll probably be okay again if I plug it back into the header it was in before, but as it's working now I'll leave it there.

[RB]

I think windows update fucks it's own drivers sometimes.

[soopytwist]

It's doing it again. If I double click my D: drive from "My Computer" I get:

D:\

Application not found

Yet, if I right click it then click Open, it opens. WTF is going?!