Windows 7 Not Detecting CD / DVD ROM Drive

Some Windows 7 users have reported issues lately where Windows 7 is not detecting their DVD Drive after they have installed Windows.

In most of these cases there are two things users can do to attempt to fix the problem.

The first fix involves removing two registry entries referencing the DVD Rom Drive. These two entries can be found in the following location.

Click the Start Menu > and in the “FIND” or “RUN’ field type “REGEDIT”.

In the Registry Editor go to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\

Once you have found this key, look in the right hand pane and remove the “UpperFilters” and “LowerFilters” key.

(Do not remove UpperFilters.bak and LowerFilters.bak)

If this does not correct the issue for you, other users have reported that renaming the Drive “Letter” has resolved the issue for them.

To rename the Drive letter right click on “Computer” and select “Manage”. Under the “Manage” window look for “Disk Management”

Under Disk Management right click on the white bar next to your optical Drive and on the menu select “Change Drive Letter”. Follow the prompt in the new window and it should take you to a drop down menu that will allow you to assign a new drive letter for your DVD Rom.

Once you have renamed the drive letter check under “My Computer” or “Explorer” to see if the drive is now showing. If it is you can repeat the process to change the drive letter back to its original and it should still be detected by Windows 7.

If the above methods fail try rebooting the system after you have made the changes outline above and see if this corrects the issue.

The Vista to Windows 7 Upgrade Hangs & Stops at 62% Percent

I have had a couple people mention to me lately that they have purchased the Windows 7 upgrade from Vista and have run into some problems. Many users are reporting a case where the system will hang at 62% during the Windows 7 upgrade.

This can actually be caused by several factors. To determine what might be affecting your installation you should check in the “Setup Log”. To do this you need to reboot your PC > roll back to Windows Vista > and then check the following file:

\$WINDOWS.~BT\Sources\Panther\setupact.log

(You can open and view this file in Notepad)

This may give you a better idea of what happened that caused the system to hang at 62% during the Windows 7 upgrade / installation.

Microsoft has reported this issue can commonly be caused by a service called “lphlpsvc”. What this means to you as an end users is you should go to the Microsoft Support site and get the hotfix for this problem which can be located here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/975253

If the hotfix doesn’t correct the issue you may want to double check the Setup log for any clues as to other issues that may be causing the problem. This information can be helpful if you are familiar with PCs or are troubleshooting with tech support.

If all else fails I recommend attempting to do a clean install of Windows 7 as this is the least problematic way to upgrade to Windows 7. Just make sure you have all your data backed up beforehand as a clean install will format your hard drive.

Windows 7 Does Not Come Out of Sleep Mode (Hibernation / Stand By)

With Windows 7 Microsoft took the sleep mode / power saving options a little to the extreme. Because of this some users have been having issues getting their PC to come out of sleep mode. After working with Windows 7 for awhile I have come up with several common fixes that users can try if they are running into these problems.

Using the Power Button to Wake to the PC with Windows 7

In some cases with Hibernation / Sleep mode under Windows 7 waking the PC by jiggling the mouse or hitting any key on the keyboard will not wake the computer.

In these cases users should try hitting the power button on the front of the PC to bring the computer out of sleep mode.

When hitting the power button hold the button for the count of “One, One Thousand” and this should be enough to wake the computer up without sending it into an instant off.

Changing Power Saving Settings under Windows 7

In some cases this issue can just be so annoying that users prefer not to deal with it altogether. If this is the case you can change your power saving settings under Windows.

To do this, do the following:

1. Right Click on the Desktop and select “Personalize” from the menu.
2. At the bottom right hand corner of the Personalize window click the “Screen Saver” icon.
3. At the bottom of the Screen Saver window look for “Power Management” and click the “Change power settings” link.
4. In the new Window you should see an option that says “Balanced (recommended)” with a link that says “Change plan settings”. Click the Change plan settings link.
5. In the new window you will be given two options. (“Turn off the display” & “Put the computer to sleep”.) To prevent your computer from going into sleep mode change the settings to “Turn off the display: 20 minutes” and “Put the computer to sleep: Never”.
6. Once you have done this click the “Save changes” button. The click “OK” on the Screen Saver window.

Your system is now set to not go into Stand By

USB Keyboard and Mouse will not Wake PC in Windows 7

In some rare cases you may continue to experience issues with your computer not coming out of sleep mode. This may not necessarily be caused by the computer being in Stand By. But it may be that either the PC or Monitor is in Power Saving mode or the system won’t accept input from your USB Keyboard or Mouse to wake it.

This is because in Windows 7 the system may shut off power to USB devices to save power. In order to make sure this doesn’t happen you would need to do the following:

1. Click the Start Menu and then right click “Computer” and select “Properties”.
2. In the new window select the “Device Manager” link that is in the upper left hand corner.
3. In the Device Manager window look down towards the bottom of the window for “Universal Serial Bus Controllers”. Click the arrow to the left of this section.
4. In the drop down menu look for any instances of “USB Root Hub”. When you find the first one right click on it and select “Properties”.
5. In the USB Root Hub Properties window look for the tab in the upper right that says “Power Management”.
6. Click on “Power Management” and uncheck the option that says “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”. Then click “OK”.
7. Continue to do this for every instance of “USB Root Hub” in device manager.

What we have just done is make sure that the computer does not turn off power to the USB ports when it goes into a Power Saving mode. This should allow us to always wake the PC by use of the USB keyboard or mouse.

Hope some of these suggestions help!

Installing a New Copy of Microsoft Windows XP on a PC

From time to time it can be really useful to reinstall Windows onto a PC. Doing a clean install once a year can help keep your system running smoothly, and wipe out a lot of the junk that you may have accumulated over time.

As with any type of OS installation make sure that prior to doing this you have backed up any important data you do not want to lose.

Once your data has been backed up you are ready to do a clean install of Windows. Whether you are reinstalling over your old Windows installation or installing Windows onto a new computer you just bought or built, this guide will walk you through the process in the easiest way possible.

Follow These Steps to Do a Clean Installation of Windows XP

The first thing you need to do is make sure the boot order is set correctly in your BIOS. You want to make sure the CD-Rom is set to boot before the hard drive. Here is a guide on how to check the Boot Order in the BIOS.

Once the boot order is set correctly, put your Windows XP disk into your CD-Rom and boot the computer.

A message will come up telling you to “Hit any key to Boot from CD”. Hit any key on the keyboard to start the Windows Setup process.

The computer will go to a black screen that tells you it’s starting the Windows Setup Process.

Now it will switch to a blue screen that has a grey bar at the bottom. In the grey bar you will see the status message “Copying Files”. Let the computer do its thing and it will eventually take you to a new screen.

The new screen will give you 3 options, Setup, Repair and Quit. You will want to hit “Enter” to choose the “Setup” option.

The next screen is the Windows licensing agreement. Click “F8” to agree and move on.

The screen you are at now will show you any partitions that are located on the drive. If you were doing a “Windows Repair” you would do it from this screen using the Repair an Existing Windows Installation option.

How to Do a Windows XP Repair (coming soon…)

The screen will show you any partitions that are located on your computer. If you are using one drive you should only see 1 partition. (In most cases) If you have multiple partitions make sure you are not choosing a secondary drive or partition that has information on it or you may lose data.

You also have the option of creating multiple partitions from this screen by choosing the “C” option.

I recommend using the full partition size for your installation. If you are trying to create multiple partitions this is something I may cover in a future guide entitled:

Creating Multiple Partitions on a Windows XP Installation (coming soon…)

For our purposes we are doing a “Clean Install” of Windows so we will select our partition and hit “Enter” to setup a new Windows installation.

The next screen it takes us to will normally give you a couple options. It will give you the option to create a FAT or NTFS file system for your installation, and it will also give you the option for standard or “Quick”.

NTFS is the recommend file system as FAT has become obsolete for most purposes. NTFS also offers better use of hard drive space, there are no 2+ gb file limitations, and security features that are not present in FAT.

I recommend selecting the option to format your drive using the NTFS file system and choosing the (QUICK) option. This will setup your drive and get you up and running as quickly as possible.

The Windows Setup process will now show you a screen where it is formatting the hard drive, setting up the file system and installing system files. Once this is done the system will reboot and will enter the Graphical portion of the Windows XP Installation process.

Click Here for Part 2 – Windows XP Graphical Installation Setup Process (coming soon…)