PC Will Not Read Audio CD

Or, more specifically from one of Warner's labels?

This happens to me regularly with their CDs, all of which can be read ok on an ancient Windows XP laptop that I still have.

I haven't been able to find a good reason why, my best guess is some combination of drive and operating system, but older more limited drives/systems seem to cope better.

Just googled the disc; it's Warner unless you have a North American copy which is from Universal/Geffen.

Hang onto to that laptop, you'll probably need it again...

From your description - the PC doesn't even see it in the drive - it is not the Warners problem.

Does it really not show - assuming windows - in File Explorer?  Does the drive try loading it? Lots of noise?

( not that it helps but my copy of that disc works fine )

It's a hell of a coincidence if it's not related to the Warner problem.

The number of discs that I've had the problem with is now close to double figures, and the symptoms posted are identical to those that I get, only ever with Warner CDs. How do you think I guessed that the CD was from Warner?

And it can't be avoided by disabling autorun, dbpoweramp and EAC don't help (although they do sometimes see the disc), etc.

There are two possible workarounds that are straightforward, but I'll post them anyway in case anyone that isn't computer literate wants to know.

1. Rip the CD on the laptop and save the ripped copy to a usb drive, then copy from there to your PC

2. As above, but burn the rip to a blank CD and use that to import into your PC

Eloise is also probably correct, it's likely due to the CD being copy protected but the Warner approach to it seems to be especially nasty on some systems. Others have also reported being able to rip discs, but the sound is distorted on playback.

Another option that supposedly works is to use one of the old CD recorders that let you copy CDs.

Thank you, people..!!

Yes, I ripped on my sons Laptop and transferred via USB stick to my PC. All good, AFAIK - the files play on my PC.

I did wonder if it was some sort of copy protection, but all my earlier Garbage CD's rip fine. My sons laptop is a similar recent vintage - Win7 - to my PC. Strange.

Yes, the drive tries to load the disc, you can hear it running - but then it stops. No msg - nothing. Disc does not show in Win Explorer. Clicking on the drive just opens the drawer. The drive will load and play other CD's fine.

Weird....  Thanks anyway.

Sounds like the CD/DVD drive in your PC is starting to go out. I've seen this a lot and had a similar problem. If I ripped a CD using EAC I could see the graph doing a lot of retries. Replaced the drive and the retries stopped. BTW I have been repairing PC's since 1976 and found devices like CD/DVD - Hard drives - tape drives and even Floppy drives will usually start to have intermittent problems before eventually dying. Solid state on the other hand usually just dies with little to no warning.

I've just had my first non-Warner CD fail to rip; and it clearly states on the back that it employs copy protection.

I parallel, I've been setting up a dedicated laptop for music playback only as it was proving too glitchy on a general purpose laptop. The drive I bought for the new laptop works perfectly with all of the CDs that I hadn't yet been able to rip. I did also try it with my Windows 7 laptop and it wouldn't recognize the drive, and as the suggested fix involved fiddling around in the registry I opted not to try it in case I messed up the operation of the existing drive.

It's from a company called Coolead and uses a Panasonic drive, and is also BluRay compatible.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=...l%20Blu-Ray%20Player

It's being used with an HP x360 running Windows 8.1.