PCA seems to be blocking a driver that doesn't exist

I currently have no Roxio or Sonic software installed on my system, ye
whenever I boot up I am greeted with

[image: http://www.mochinet.com/images/temp/PCAError1.jpg

Note that there's no way to say "Please don't bother me about this i
the future" or similar

I've tried Roxio's DLA patch, and this error continues to b
reported

I've of course double-checked installed programs against all o
Roxio's current and past applications, including Sonic applications
Nothing

I've searched through msconfig for anything related to Roxio, Sonic o
any of their applications (I went down a list of Roxio/Sonic apps an
checked for everything they've ever sold)

I did the same in services.msc

I did the same in the registry, including deleting any entries (afte
creating a restore point) that looked like removing them might help

I also deleted the registry entr
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Window
NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\ from the registry, along with it
sister which I think was under HKEY_USERS

I've also searched through the .ini files in C:\Windows for an
mention of any of Roxio's current or past applications

It's as if this driver simply doesn't exist, which might of cours
account for the last part of the message indicating "Location: No
Available"

Having failed in all this, I looked into finding a way to suppress th
message. So I found the "Program Compatibility Assistant" in Service
and disabled it--But I still get the exact same message every time
boot -despite the PCA being disabled-!!

This is perfectly maddening

If anyone could provide me with any more ideas, I'm open to them
Reformatting the system is out of the question

--

A little background

This is a Windows Vista upgrade from XP. It's also a successfu
migration from a Dell XPS Gen 2 to a Dell XPS M1730--fully loaded. Th
migration was done first, which involved an XP repair install, but the
I discovered there were some hardware issues with XP with this system
So I did the Vista Ultimate upgrade and managed to restore my previou
environment after confirming all my beloved apps installed over th
course of a few years were still present

The XPS Gen 2 system was itself a migration from a Toshiba Tecra 8200
three years ago. This involved its own XP repair install and a whole lo
of driver juggling. But it had been perfectly stable for three years
without so much as a frozen screen

Some time in the distant past this was a Windows 2000 system

The Roxio apps came with the Dell XPS Gen 2, and I only installed the
briefly after the migration to see if I'd use them. I uninstalled the
promptly, realizing their uselessness, and never thought more about it

It's possible Sonic DLA may have been part of the old Tecra 820
system--but I'm uncertain. I seem to recall fighting with DLA on the ol
Tecra, and ultimately being relieved to find a way to disable it

Again, any assistance would be vastly appreciated. I want to at th
very least suppress this warning message

Thanks in advance

--
wornway
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.co

Bumping this back up in case anyone who could help has missed it.


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Bumping this back up in case anyone who could help has missed it.


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

wornways wrote:
> I currently have no Roxio or Sonic software installed on my system,
> yet whenever I boot up I am greeted with:
>
> [image: http://www.mochinet.com/images/temp/PCAError1.jpg]
>
> Note that there's no way to say "Please don't bother me about this in
> the future" or similar.
>
> I've tried Roxio's DLA patch, and this error continues to be
> reported.
>
> I've of course double-checked installed programs against all of
> Roxio's current and past applications, including Sonic applications.
> Nothing.
>
> I've searched through msconfig for anything related to Roxio, Sonic or
> any of their applications (I went down a list of Roxio/Sonic apps and
> checked for everything they've ever sold).
>
> I did the same in services.msc.
>
> I did the same in the registry, including deleting any entries (after
> creating a restore point) that looked like removing them might help.
>
> I also deleted the registry entry
> HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows
> NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\ from the registry, along with its
> sister which I think was under HKEY_USERS.
>
> I've also searched through the .ini files in C:\Windows for any
> mention of any of Roxio's current or past applications.
>
> It's as if this driver simply doesn't exist, which might of course
> account for the last part of the message indicating "Location: Not
> Available".
>
> Having failed in all this, I looked into finding a way to suppress the
> message. So I found the "Program Compatibility Assistant" in Services
> and disabled it--But I still get the exact same message every time I
> boot -despite the PCA being disabled-!!!
>
> This is perfectly maddening.
>
> If anyone could provide me with any more ideas, I'm open to them.
> Reformatting the system is out of the question.
>
> ---
>
> A little background:
>
> This is a Windows Vista upgrade from XP. It's also a successful
> migration from a Dell XPS Gen 2 to a Dell XPS M1730--fully loaded. The
> migration was done first, which involved an XP repair install, but
> then I discovered there were some hardware issues with XP with this
> system. So I did the Vista Ultimate upgrade and managed to restore my
> previous environment after confirming all my beloved apps installed
> over the course of a few years were still present.
>
> The XPS Gen 2 system was itself a migration from a Toshiba Tecra 8200,
> three years ago. This involved its own XP repair install and a whole
> lot of driver juggling. But it had been perfectly stable for three
> years, without so much as a frozen screen.
>
> Some time in the distant past this was a Windows 2000 system.
>
> The Roxio apps came with the Dell XPS Gen 2, and I only installed them
> briefly after the migration to see if I'd use them. I uninstalled them
> promptly, realizing their uselessness, and never thought more about
> it.
>
> It's possible Sonic DLA may have been part of the old Tecra 8200
> system--but I'm uncertain. I seem to recall fighting with DLA on the
> old Tecra, and ultimately being relieved to find a way to disable it.
>
> Again, any assistance would be vastly appreciated. I want to at the
> very least suppress this warning message.
>
> Thanks in advance,

This info works for XP, I haven't tried it with Vista yet.
Download Autoruns from this page, (download link is at the top right side)
It does not need to be installed, just unzip to your Desktop.
It lists everything loaded at start-up.
It was written by Mark Russinovich. What he doesn't know about Windows isn't worth knowing.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb963902.aspx

Run autoruns.exe and agree to the licence.
The first page is a bit daunting, it opens on the ' Everything ' tab.
Click on Options and put a tick on ' Hide Microsoft Entries '.
Click on the double green arrow refresh button.

Now the first group of entries is the startup keys in the registry.
You can right-click and delete anything you are sure is suspect.
Or you can clear the check box to leave it in the registry but disable it from running at boot-up.
Do the same for the other entries.
If you are not sure about an entry, right click and you have options including a Google search.
You can always re-enable anything you disable by re-ticking the relevant box.

One section deals with drivers, both installed and missing drivers. You may find something here.

Anything that looks suspicious just clear the box; you can re-enable or delete on next boot.

Good luck!

Dave;793241 Wrote:
> Dave wrote:
> This info works for XP, I haven't tried it with Vista yet.
> Download Autoruns from this page, (download link is at the top right
> side)
> It does not need to be installed, just unzip to your Desktop.
> It lists everything loaded at start-up.
> It was written by Mark Russinovich. What he doesn't know about Windows
> isn't worth knowing.
>
> 'AutoRuns for Windows'
> (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb963902.aspx)
>
> Run autoruns.exe and agree to the licence.
> The first page is a bit daunting, it opens on the ' Everything ' tab.
> Click on Options and put a tick on ' Hide Microsoft Entries '.
> Click on the double green arrow refresh button.
>
> Now the first group of entries is the startup keys in the registry.
> You can right-click and delete anything you are sure is suspect.
> Or you can clear the check box to leave it in the registry but disable
> it from running at boot-up.
> Do the same for the other entries.
> If you are not sure about an entry, right click and you have options
> including a Google search.
> You can always re-enable anything you disable by re-ticking the
> relevant box.
>
> One section deals with drivers, both installed and missing drivers. You
> may find something here.
>
> Anything that looks suspicious just clear the box; you can re-enable or
> delete on next boot.
>
> Good luck!


Ah Dave! Thank you!

That little tool is positively outstanding! I've filed it away in my
new "Vista Management Tools" folder, to be gotten into again whenever
the next difficult Windows headache manifests.

Well, I fired it up, went to the driver tab, and right there on the
first view of the list was some old dinosaur called _*cdr4_2k.sys*_,
published by Roxio, and right beneath this another moth-eaten antique
called _*cdralw2k.sys*_, published by Sonic Solutions.

I disabled both and rebooted. And I didn't hear or see a thing from our
friendly, but annoying, neighborhood PCA.

And good god man are there a lot of things that sucked into memory
during bootup. This is tool is exactly--EXACTLY--the sort of thing I was
hoping to find out here somewhere. I can actually SEE what's going on
under the hood during bootup and investigate.

Someone should give Mr. Russinovich a great big shiny medal, with
little sparkly things on worth a lot of money.

Thank you thank you thank you! This is outstanding!

Take care!


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

Turns out I was a bit ahead of myself. It never occurred to me for one
billionth of a moment that my read-writable Blu-ray/DVD/CD ROM drive
would disappear from my life upon removing _*cdr4_2k.sys*_ from the load
driver list. I only discovered this later when I went to load a CD to
reregister an application that Vista had unregistered during the
'upgrade'?

I attempted to put the driver entry back by exporting a similar key
and changing its values, the reimporting it, and updating its values
further in regedit. But this just brought back my PCA error without
bringing back my ROM drive. Bummer.

So I removed my homemade key and did a system restore, which I knew
was going to undo a few recent changes I made to my environment. But I
figure I'd have my ROM drive back, and it came back when the restore was
complete.

So I played with it some:

I used autoruns.exe to disable _*cdr4_2k.sys*_ from loading, and
rebooted. And sure enough, the PCA error went away, along with the ROM
drive.

So I went into the Device Manager to have a look at the ROM device--A
flashy new thing called *-MATSHITA BD-RE UJ-220 ATA Device-*--which was
there, but with that yellow exclamation warning on top of it.

I looked at the ROM drive's properties and under Device status was a
complaint about this device not being able to load because its drivers
couldn't be loaded properly.

Of course, at this point I know there's a connection between this
problem and my having disabled _*cdr4_2k.sys*_ from loading. So I
reenabled _*cdr4_2k.sys*_ and rebooted, confirming the return of my ROM
drive, along with my trusty PCA notice.

So, I thought to myself, Vista thinks an antiquated Win2k driver that
it refuses to load--complete with glaring error notice--is essential to
the operation of this flashy new ROM device. Of course, I thought
further, it's probably not essential, but the best and the brightest
there at Microsoft didn't anticipate something (*gasp* did I say that
out loud?), and somehow this old device has been bundled up as part of
the driver's needed to operate this device.

Okay, so what now. Whaaaat noooooowwwwwww, I think to myself. Guess
I'll wander through the registry looking at all keys containing the
string "cdr4_2k" and see if anything jumps out at me.

Now, the "Driver Provider" for this ROM drive, somehow, is
"Microsoft", Driver Version "6.0.6001.18000". Yet, under the Driver File
Details I note that the only driver, of the five listed, actually
-provided- by Microsoft is a little thing called *_cdrom.sys_*, which
kind of makes sense to me. This entry has a little certification check
sort of icon next to it.

The other four devices are two "provided" by "Sonic Solutions" called
*_Cdralw2k.sys_* and *_PxHelp20.sys_*, one from "Iomega Corporation"
called *_iomdisk.sys_*, and--hey!--one from Roxio called--and you
guessed it--*_cdr4_2k.sys_*. These all had black box icons next to them,
with the last including a little red circle with a red x through the
middle. I'm guessing this is because that driver had been disabled from
loading.

So, what I was hoping for as I studied the registry was to see some
correlation between my frisky little friend, the *_cdr4_2k.sys_* driver
and my *-MATSHITA BD-RE UJ-220 ATA Device-* or at least CDROM devices in
general.

And I found it! Here:


Code:
--------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Cl ass\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
...

--------------------



And here:


Code:
--------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\Control\Cl ass\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
...

--------------------



Between the -LowerFilters- value, which had the REG_MULTI_SZ entries
*PxHelp20*, *iomdisk*, and *cdr4_2k*, and the -UpperFilters- value,
which had the REG_MULTI_SZ entry *Cdralw2k*, I had a list of all the
non-Microsoft drivers shown in Driver Details mentioned above.

So I did a search for the GUID shown in the key name, just to see if
I'd come across some mention of my actual installed ROM device, and I
did!


Code:
--------------------
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\IDE\C dRomMATSHITA_BD-RE_UJ-220___________________1.00____\5&23059cc1&0&0.0.0
...

--------------------



And under this was the value -ClassGUID- with the GUID above along with
the value -FriendlyName- with the name of my *-MATSHITA-* device.

This was good enough for me.

I created a restore point and returned to the -LowerFilters- value
mentioned above, under both keys, and removed the entry "cdr4_2k".

Deciding this would be enough for the first try, I crossed my toes
and fingers and rebooted.

And finally, my PCA error went away, -and- my ROM device showed up
and worked without problems.

Whew!!!

Again, Dave, thanks for pointing me to that autoruns.exe tool.
Without it I never would have known where to start and what to look for.


Cheerfulness!

-----EAT


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

wornways wrote:

[snip]

> Ah Dave! Thank you!
>
> That little tool is positively outstanding! I've filed it away in my
> new "Vista Management Tools" folder, to be gotten into again whenever
> the next difficult Windows headache manifests.
>
> Well, I fired it up, went to the driver tab, and right there on the
> first view of the list was some old dinosaur called _*cdr4_2k.sys*_,
> published by Roxio, and right beneath this another moth-eaten antique
> called _*cdralw2k.sys*_, published by Sonic Solutions.
>
> I disabled both and rebooted. And I didn't hear or see a thing from
> our friendly, but annoying, neighborhood PCA.
>
> And good god man are there a lot of things that sucked into memory
> during bootup. This is tool is exactly--EXACTLY--the sort of thing I
> was hoping to find out here somewhere. I can actually SEE what's
> going on under the hood during bootup and investigate.
>
> Someone should give Mr. Russinovich a great big shiny medal, with
> little sparkly things on worth a lot of money.
>
> Thank you thank you thank you! This is outstanding!
>
> Take care!

Glad to hear of your success.
Mr Russinovich is now with Microsoft and I can recommend his ocassional blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/default.aspx

,

Well I spoke too soon again. This time it caused my system to forge
what a DVD is. So I had to put things back, and I'm back to where
started

I know now that the driver I'm dealing with is *_cdr4_2k.sys_*. I
seems like, from the registry entries, as if it were installed b
Adaptec, despite it being "Published" by Roxio. Easy CD Creator? Wha
are the chances

I don't have any Adaptec software installed either. But my old Tecr
came with Easy CD Creator

I wonder if there's some utility out there that can clean out Adapte
installed software and drivers? Perhaps this is the way to go

--
wornway
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.co

Well I found this:

'EEZ000182 : Clean Uninstall of Easy CD Creator 5'
(http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/Creat...?set-locale=en)

It's supposedly a way to clean out everything pertaining to an Adaptec
Easy CD Creator 5 install. Good lord, after I've slept and feel my nerve
a bit, I think I'll give it a shot.

I have a feeling I'll need to do a repair install of Vista once I've
finished with the instructions in order to get things right again.

Will a repair install of Vista completely wipe out all personal files
in my user space the way the Vista upgrade did? Or will it leave my
bloody files be and just focus on repairing and updating -system- files?


--
wornways
Posted via http://www.vistaheads.com

wornways wrote:
> Well I found this:
>
> 'EEZ000182 : Clean Uninstall of Easy CD Creator 5'
> (http://kb.roxio.com/content/kb/Creat...?set-locale=en)
>
> It's supposedly a way to clean out everything pertaining to an Adaptec
> Easy CD Creator 5 install. Good lord, after I've slept and feel my
> nerve a bit, I think I'll give it a shot.
>
> I have a feeling I'll need to do a repair install of Vista once I've
> finished with the instructions in order to get things right again.
>
> Will a repair install of Vista completely wipe out all personal files
> in my user space the way the Vista upgrade did? Or will it leave my
> bloody files be and just focus on repairing and updating -system-
> files?

I don't know what a repair install involves - sorry ! :-(
Maybe somebody else who knows will be able to tell you.
Reading your posts makes me glad I haven't 'upgraded' from XP to Vista!