Optical drive auto play glitch

Scottyboy99 · 02 May 2016

I have a strange issue in that my optical disks do not auto play unless I open 'this pc' / explorer which seems to kickstart them into life! Even being in explorer doesn't work upon inserting a cd or DVD - I have to close the window and re-open it to trigger auto play. I can easily circumvent the issue, I use slysoft's AnyDVD and as long as I start it so it resides in my system tray and is active the auto play then functions normally.

i strongly suspect realplayer (or as it is now known 'realtimes') has introduced this issue. It's actually a bit of a nightmare piece of software but I only use it because it is able to latch into YouTube for all browsers (including edge) to be able to download YouTube videos. So it's good from that respect. I think it's presence though has unsettled autoplay.

like I say I can get around it easily. I suspect any piece of software resident in the tray that looks at / or scans optical discs would alleviate the issue (in my case it just so happens to be AnyDVD).

But my question is, has anybody else seen this behaviour and how did they get round it? I know the obvious is to uninstall realtimes but I would like to keep the function of being able to download YouTube videos - even using edge. So if there are other thoughts or suggestions I would be interested to hear them. I expect this not to be something many, if at all, have run into purely because the user base of real player / real times is pretty small.

It's worth also adding that this anamoly is totally isolated to optical discs. Autoplay for things like USB drives and memory cards is totally unaffected and behaves totally normal.

cheers, Wayne

dalchina · 02 May 2016

Hi, I was looking into this for someone who'd reported difficulty getting WMP to recognise there was a blank disk inserted to burn. I got Autoplay working on my old PC, but like you, find CD/DVD's not usually being recognised, and certainly not on a sequence of insert/eject/insert/eject - only the once, sometimes.

Explorer still shows the DVD as if it were in the drive, even when it's ejected, until I do sthg like rt click, properties.

I've become convinced that sthg is failing to report the state of the drive.

On this basis I knocked up a quick script to request information about the disk every 1s.

An initial test seems to indicate autoplay responds more often (but not 100%) to the repeated insert/eject/insert/eject sequence. (It may be that I need to leave it ejected a little longer)

I also note a flash drive fails to be detected properly by autoplay, whereas an external USB HDD is.

When I eject a blank disk, WMP updates its display under the Burn tab to show that. And with the polling active, WMP updates again to show the disk when inserted.

Explorer updates at the same time (Navigation pane, not This PC, Devices and Drives).

(By the way, PC Specialist believed they could get my keyboard and touchpad to wake my PC- they tried a remote session and retired puzzled, just as I'd expected having tried the powercfg commands. Apparently older versions of the Cosmos IV could do that- mine can't, they advised later).

Scottyboy99 · 02 May 2016

Interesting - seems my laying the blame on realplayer/realtimes might be incorrect. I seemed to remember reading something ages ago that it can mess with autoplay. So it could be that this is a Windows 10 bug. I guess optical drives are becoming less frequent these days that this could be a neglected area. AnyDVD provides a perfect workaround for me and I can live with the issue. My last laptop (albeit Windows 7) had realplayer installed and I never had the issue but now I think back. I remember it had some kind of roxio suite pre installed and there was some kind of system tray item related to it - so maybe that made autoplay work at all times. Sadly I no longer have that machine to test with.

ive not noticed any issue with flash drives though. I don't use windows media player much. Since MS brutally ripped the native DVD playback out I barely use it. It was in Windows 7 days my DVD player of choice.

(sorry to hear of your issue on the Cosmos. my machine was a disaster that I ended up sending back for a refund. Gpu and hard drive issues - it's a shame because aesthetically I liked it and the screen was great. I'm now toying with what to do as I do want a second machine. Windows 10 has dented my confidence a little. Dare I say it but I was looking at OSX to compliment our iPhones, iPad and Apple TV. As long as one can still share files over network and OSX and Windows 10 machines can see each other on the network I am tempted - although as a gamer I know OSX will never match upto Windows and you pay a price premium for their hardware)

dalchina · 03 May 2016

Sorry to hear of the demise of your Cosmos. Can end up as a big waste of time when sthg you've configured fails. So far mine's been perfect as far as the h/w - just
a. Autoplay quirk (because of ???); lack of wake, keyboard and touchpad; Synaptics videos not playing from driver (because...??).
b. The positioning of the USB connectors to the front- the right ones interfere with the mouse, and the cables would interfere with the DVD drive when opening except I use rt angle USB adaptors to lift the cables away from these. Far from ideal.

And I need a thinner mouse mat so it's not caught by opening the drive door, or put a mat under the PC to lift it clear.

Poor ergonomics. Had the USB connections been towards the hinge, that would have been better.

And the headphone socket on the right is the wrong side too. (More people are right handed than left too..).

Just didn't think about that at all, never had any problems before like that with 3 laptops.

One thing about Win 10 that is REALLY badly thought out (besides the start menu LHS esp.) is changing the language settings (US - UK) and avoiding getting 'Search settings aren't quite ready yet' in Settings. Until someone works out exactly the right sequence between changing the settings and windows updates, it's pot luck. lx07 suggested uninstalling cumulative updates, then changing the settings worked.

Scottyboy99 · 03 May 2016

There is allot to cause frustration in your list there. Presume you are sticking it out with the laptop though. I had to give in unfortunately. I guess I could of had parts replaced under warranty but I lost so much spare time on the machine - my wife literally had steam coming out her ears most days as I wrestled with it. Just didn't want to play Russian roulette with the machine anymore.

got to agree with you on the language settings. They are pretty shambolic. As you say it's pure pot luck on getting the sequencing right. I don't understand why Windows doesn't auto set and download the correct language during initial setup and first turn on. Despite asking me for my region it still defaulted to US English - of course I changed it all but I had that search settings quirk for a while too. It seemed to fix itself but I have no idea how!

But it I think I am done with Windows 10 for our second machine now. I will dip my toe into the world of OSX - I get the impression it will cause me slightly less stress and headaches! Will have to see. Ultimately I prefer Windows but maybe in a few years Windows 10 will be more appealing. As it stands there are too many things that irritate. I could write a long long list. I'm not totally turning my back on it as we have our gaming desktop with Windows 10 on it. There are some glitches due to the OS (including the autoplay thing) but for the most part it's ok.

jmikef · 15 May 2016

Win10 Autoplay for optical disks is currently broken for many folks. There are numerous threads here - there are may many more out on the NET. I worked with Windows support for weeks for a fix, and no current solution.

dalchina · 15 May 2016

I've created a simple workaround: run a small Autohotkey script like this:
;
; Poll DVD-RW drive for autoplay to detect drives
; and explorer to update
;
Loop {
Sleep, 900
DriveSpaceFree, Space, z:\
}

This causes the explorer view of the drive to update (e.g. on removal) and triggers the autoplay prompt.
Z: is my DVD drive of course.

Thought I'd found another way but that stopped working.