Windows XP Won’t Recognize CD Drive

Recently someone approached me with a question about their CD drive, basically Windows XP wasn’t recognizing it, it would only show up in the device manager with the following error message…

The device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device (Code 31).

Uninstalling and reinstalling the drive yields the same result. I finally managed to track it down to a leftover registry value from when they’d removed some disc burning software.

You might give the following steps a try if you’re having similar difficulties.

Step 1:
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

Step 2:
In the Registry Editor, expand My Computer, and then expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE.
Expand SYSTEM, then expand CurrentControlSet.
Expand Control, then expand Class.
Under Class, click {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
In the right hand pane, select UpperFilters.
With the UpperFilters entry selected, press the delete button on your keyboard
It will ask you “Are you sure you want to delete this value?”, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the registry entry.

Step 3:
In the right hand pane, select LowerFilters.
With the LowerFilters entry selected, press the delete button on your keyboard
It will ask you “Are you sure you want to delete this value?”, click Yes to confirm the deletion of the registry entry.

Exit the Registry Editor and reboot.

Following these steps may result in your current burning software no longer working, to fix this just reinstall it. If you use the built in Windows burning utility, just uninstall and reinstall the CD drive from the device manager.