CD Burner Questions

Hi guys, a friend of mine is having problems and I do not seem to know enough to help. I was hoping you guys could help me shed some light on this - Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

Here is my friend's message to me

i have a problem i wonder if you could help me with. i recently installed a cd burner in my comp and after installing it i never tested it out. i still have my old cdrom installed and the burner does not have sound hooked up since they didn't give me a cable for that and besides i only think one drive can have sound.. (yes/no?)
anyway..

my cdrom drive has always played audio cd's just fine. today my daughter took a burned cd she had and stuck it into my cdburner to play it. Windows media player popped up an error and said my drive cannot read digital and would only work in audio mode, that cd audio's would play but taht the visualizations for media player wouldn't work. only option is to click OK at that window. I know absolutely i always had digital playback and copying checked in media player prior to this.

I assumed i got this message because sound was not hooked up for the burner, but now my cdrom will no longer play cd-audios (music cd's). i keep getting that pop up window/error.
i have reset the media player to digital copy and playback, it acts like it accepts the changes but when i pop a cd in, i get the error/popup window all over again and it will NOT play sound on the music cd's. it looks like it's playing but no sound comes out. i can however play mp3's, wma's and all audio files on my HD just fine.

any ideas how to correct this?

i have to admit that this is the first time i've tried to play a music cd from the cdrom (or the burner) since installing the burner. i _can_ play game cd's in either drive with sound.. (i think the games were full installs though, i can double check that if it's important for you to know. anyway, any ideas?

Some additional information given to me by my friend

where i said in the msg: "Windows media player popped up an error and said my drive cannot read digital and would only work in audio mode," .. audio should be Analog.

I don't know if it's important or not but the burner (Sony CD-R/RW CRX175A1) and the cd-rom (A-Open 52x) are both installed as masters on their own IDE channels. the burner has Buffer under-run error protection.
Windows Media Player v7.01.00.3055. the OS is windows ME

Some cdroms don't support digital audio extraction, which could be the core of the problem.

Also, depending on the master/slave configuration of the drives, digital audio extraction may not be possible.

I must admit, that message is someone confusing though.

Let me get this straight:

Burner has no cd audio connector hooked up, won't play digital audio
CDRom HAS a cd audio connector hooked up, used to play digital audio, but doesn't anymore.


audio connectors aren't necessary for digital audio extraction. Analog audio means audio from an audio cable.

My advice would be to pick up an audio cable, and don't use digital audio extraction. Normal Analog audio tends to be smoother, and have less noise (But this depends on how good and fast your cdrom is at digital audio extraction).


Really, there is no specific reason to use DAE, unless you don't have a cable. I'd suggest just getting and using a cable.

Have you tried un-installing Media Player and then re-install, sometimes that will work. Just a shot in the dark.

If you can, try playing the CD by other means. Try playing it in Winamp or Creative Playcenter. If it plays, you know it's a Windows media problem. Windows media player isn't all that great for playing CD's anyway.