Windows 7 ate my optical drive!

Another quick Windows 7 beta testing update. It’s only fair to report the bad with the good and I seem to have found a bug. I’m not sure but this one may be a carry over from Vista.

Last week I wrapped up an event video project for a client. They wanted ten copies of the movie on DVD. I burned the first two or three with no problem, then the software (Sony DVD Architect Studio 4.0) locked up, or so I thought. Turns out it was looking for the optical drive to no avail. Apparently Windows 7 had eaten it!

To make a long story short, even after re-booting my laptop, the optical drive would intermittently drop out of device manager when I inserted a blank DVD. It’s like the operating system just ate it. Sometimes I could burn two discs before it would happen, sometimes three.

I ended up uninstalling the driver for the burner and letting Windows reinstall it. That seemed to help, but today I needed to simply rip an audio CD. The process goes along fine until the end and then stops without finishing. Sony Acid throws up an error, but Windows Media Player 11 just sits there saying it’s 100% complete, but never actually generates the file. I haven’t found a way around this particular problem yet. I’d love to hear from you if you’ve had a similar problem and found a solution.

On a lighter note, I snagged a pretty nice graphics tablet from Woot.com last week. It’s a Digipro T-8000U. If you haven’t discovered Woot.com take a look. Every once in a while they have what they call a Woot-off and instead of the normal one product per day, they list one product after another as they sell out.

I got this Digipro graphics tablet for under $40 including shipping. I thought it would be a good way to get started with a tablet without breaking the bank. I took it out of the box, plugged it into a USB port and within 30 seconds, Windows 7 had identified it and installed a driver. It did require a re-boot, but after that it works fine. I never even touched the included driver CD. Pretty impressive for an “off-brand’ and somewhat obscure piece of hardware.

I still like Windows 7 for the most part, but if it won’t give back my optical drive, I may have to revert to XP. Let’s hope not!

Brett