Optical drives not recognized in Windows Vista after installing iTunes 7
Symptoms
After installing iTunes 7, you may notice that your optical drive is no longer recognized in Windows Vista.
Products Affected
iTunes 7 for Windows
Resolution
These steps should restore your ability to use your optical drive in other applications, however, you will be unable to burn discs in iTunes and you will see the following error message when opening iTunes:
Warning!
The registry settings used by the iTunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall iTunes.
It's important in this case to not reinstall iTunes.
Important: These steps involve making changes to the Windows Registry using the Registry Editor (Regedit). Even if you are very comfortable editing the registry, you should make a backup of the registry prior to editing it. Making mistakes in Regedit can cause strange behavior and can even prevent Windows from starting. The changes may cause the software that installed the entries to not work correctly until you restore the entries. If you need more help, you may perform a search on "backup registry" in Windows Help.
To disable third-party device filters in Windows Vista
- From the Start menu, in the Start Search field, type regedit and press Enter.
- If Windows needs your permission to continue, click Continue.
- Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
- Choose Edit > Find (or press Control-F).
- Enter 4D36E965 and click Find.
- When the entry is found, it should look like this:
- Choose File > Export.
- In the dialog box that opens, make sure the "Selected branch" radio button is selected and save the file somewhere that you can find it.
- Right-click the UpperFilters entry and from the shortcut menu, choose Modify.
- Delete "GEARAspiWDM" from the Value data text field. When deleting this text, it is important not to leave any blank lines in the Value data text field.
- Click OK.
- Restart the computer.
This document will be updated as more information becomes available.
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