MC is incorrectly detecting my optical drives and can't use one of them at all (even to play media). The drive works correctly in Nero, WiMP, and every other app I've tried to use it in.
I recently installed a new second optical drive in my computer. It is a NEC ND-3500AG DVD-RW drive. This drive replaced an older Pioneer DVD-R drive. I also have a Lite-On LTR-48246S CD-RW Drive. I think this may have been a problem before I got the NEC drive, but I never cared because the DVD-R drive worked correctly (of course I couldn't burn discs with it, so that wasn't an issue). Here is my "System Info" stuff ...
Media Center Registered 11.0.149 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1655 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 681 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2900.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2900.2180 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Drive E: Mode:Normal Type:Auto Speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive D: LITE-ON LTR-48246S Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:48 MaxSpeed:48 BurnProof:Yes
Drive E: LITE-ON LTR-48246S Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:48 MaxSpeed:48 BurnProof:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
As you can see, drive E is detected as a second Lite-On drive, when it is not, it is the NEC DVD-RW drive. Also, bizarre as it may seem, if I burn a CD through MC and select drive E (which Windows sees as the NEC DVD-RW drive) as the burning drive, MC shows the list of files on drive E in the tree and whatnot, but actually BURNS to drive D - the Lite-On CD-RW drive.
If I put an audio disc in the NEC drive, MC detects it, lists the songs (so reads the CD-Text), but will not play them. It just lists "Buffering" in the top display and never starts playback.
I have clean installed Windows relatively recently, and needed to completely reinstall MC (around version 11.0.136 I think). This made no difference. It is possible that I have something in the hardware set up oddly I suppose, but as I said I am playing an audio disc through WiMP on the NEC drive right now that WON'T play through MC. (I can list out the Primary/Secondary Master/Slave relationships if anyone thinks it is pertinent).
What the heck is going on?!? As I mentioned, when I had the old Pioneer DVD-Rom drive in there, I thought something funny was going on .... I remember that it would list the Lite-On drive as both drives in the CD-Writer Options pane (as it still does). Since I never tried to burn to the Read-only drive (I knew that wouldn't work) I figured it didn't matter. I also remember that I had to switch the "digital playback" option off to get audio CDs to play from the Pioneer drive (then drive E). I figured it was just a problem with the Pioneer drive (it was a close to first generation DVD-Rom so ...)