itunes for windows not playing cd's [Archive]

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 04:42 PM

the cd itself isn't even showing up in the left pane. i wish it was a matter of preferences, but i'm afraid the problem is probably deeper... like an unsupported drive. i went to apple's tech support site for itunes for windows and it seems i'm not alone in this...

Frisco

Oct 16, 2003, 04:50 PM

mmarff,

Give Apple Tech Support a call.
1-800-275-2273

Keep us informed

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 04:56 PM

i tried that support # and it said it couldn't be reached from my area... if anyone has any more support #s to call, i'd appreciate it

Hugin777

Oct 16, 2003, 04:56 PM

Originally posted by mmarff
the cd itself isn't even showing up in the left pane. i wish it was a matter of preferences, but i'm afraid the problem is probably deeper... like an unsupported drive. i went to apple's tech support site for itunes for windows and it seems i'm not alone in this...

Do Windows normally detect that you insert a CD ? You can tell Windows to ignore when CDs are inserted - particularly if you want to disable AutoRun... If Windows ignore newly inserted CDs iTunes may not have a chance. Maybe there is a way to tell iTunes to check the CD drive for media ?

synthetickittie

Oct 16, 2003, 04:59 PM

RESTART YOUR COMPUTER!.. I just tried it on my roommates pc and it wasnt playin cd's and I restarted the computer and all works perfect

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 05:00 PM

i tried every possible configuration of auto run... one of them being when i inserted the cd, windows prompted me to choose what i wanted to do and one of the choices was "play this music cd with iTunes", and even when i clicked on that, iTunes failed to play or recognize the cd. so sad...

and by the way, restarting my computer was the first, second and third thing i did, so i know that's not the problem

Frisco

Oct 16, 2003, 05:14 PM

Are u in Canada?

Did u try running a Windows Update on your computer? Sometimes that will find updated cd drivers on your computer. If not go the cd manufacture's website to get the latest cd drivers.

Canadian #
1-800-263-3394

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 05:16 PM

no, i'm in chicago... all updates are current... checking for manufacturer updated drivers now...

Frisco

Oct 16, 2003, 05:37 PM

Please keep us informed.
We don't want to lose a potential i-Tunes user.

Trust me it will be well worth the hassle ;)

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 05:37 PM

i updated the firmware, restarted and it appears to work now... we'll see about burning yet, but at least now i can replace all these mp3s with aacs...

Frisco

Oct 16, 2003, 05:53 PM

Glad to hear it :)

mmarff

Oct 16, 2003, 06:30 PM

can't say that it's completely fixed... when i insert a new cd, it does not refresh in the source panel. i have to close iTunes first and then when i open it back up, the new cd shows up. strange. oh well... ripping works, burning works... can't say that i'm disappointed. :)

Laslo Panaflex

Oct 16, 2003, 07:10 PM

Really, its apples developers, developing for Windows, when there are 100's of 1000's of configurations on a PC. I am not surprised that some people are having issues. Windows is a hard platform to program for . . . especially when you are an apple developer used to the hardware restrictions and branding that apple has.

Of course, not all the developers are used to developing for macs, there are windows developers that they outsourced and hired. . . which makes even more understandable that there are bugs:D

benixau

Oct 16, 2003, 07:53 PM

Originally posted by Laslo Panaflex
Of course, not all the developers are used to developing for macs, there are windows developers that they outsourced and hired. . . which makes even more understandable that there are bugs:D

now now. play nice. they don't put all those bugs in there on purpose. :D :D

Frisco

Oct 16, 2003, 10:18 PM

mmarff,

Sorry to hear that you still have this CD problem. Seems like Apple has some bugs to work out tomorrow!

macktheknife

Oct 16, 2003, 11:56 PM

I'm working on a Gateway laptop. iTunes doesn't seem to recognize CDs for some strange reason. Hope this gets fixed.

Before any of you start snipping about "Apple doesn't have to time to get develop for all CD players out there" or "Get a Mac", blah, blah, blah, just remember that if MusicMatch can play my CDs flawlessly, why can't iTunes?

So far, so good, Apple: Just fix the CD problem.

oldschool

Oct 17, 2003, 01:12 AM

Originally posted by mmarff
no, i'm in chicago... all updates are current... checking for manufacturer updated drivers now...

were u the guy who caught the ball, thereby changing the course of history? :D

mmarff

Oct 17, 2003, 09:42 AM

no, i was the guy who couldn't afford a $400 ticket to get into the game, standing in the middle of waveland avenue, drinking liquor out of a sprite bottle, crying for my cubs and waiting for the curse to be lifted...

iTunes: everything minus the cd recognition is great. bought an album from itms, made a playlist, burned a cd, and synched everything to my ipod with such ease it made me wonder how the guys at musicmatch stay in business. :)

Frisco

Oct 17, 2003, 11:46 AM

I got this from another post. See if it helps.

You need to manually enable a "service" on Windows 2000/XP machines

Here's how:

First, make sure you have administrative right to your PC

Go to the control panel --> Open Administrative Tools

Double click on Services, from the list on the right, find an item called "GEARSecurity". Double click on the item, a new window will show up.

Start the service by clicking on Start. It will take a while.

After the service has been started, run iTunes.

mmarff

Oct 17, 2003, 12:15 PM

yeah, i found that on apples support forums, too. however, when i went in my control panel to start the service, it was already running. i stopped it, restarted it, restarted my computer, opened up iTunes and put in a cd and had the same problem. i was really concerned with this yesterday, but after seeing all the posts across the internet of people having the same problem i'm pretty sure this is something apple is going to have to remedy if they want to keep a steady customer base with it's windows users. the music store is far too profitable for them to just shrug off such a major issue such as this...

Dolphin84

Oct 17, 2003, 06:14 PM

Hi all, this is my first post, though I've read these forums for some time (Now I actually have something to talk about ;) )

I, too, am using iTunes for Windows and have a optical drive that's unrecognized by iTunes. When I start up the program, I get this error message:

"Warning!
The iTunes service for importing and burning CDs and DVDs has not been started. Please restart the service to enable burning and importing."

I tried enabling the GEAR services, but I'm unable to start it (Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely manner). Now, oftentimes Windows itself doesn't respond in "a timely manner," but when your college forces you to buy Windows, one doesn't have much of a choice...

But hey, otherwise iTunes rocks! I've been a 'passive' Mac fan for a while now, just waiting for the opportunity to switch one of these days.

Hope the error message info helps!

mmarff

Oct 18, 2003, 09:09 PM

alright, it's doing it again... no cd showing up at all. what makes it even more strange is i went into "my computer/properties of cd-rom drive/auto play" and iTunes isn't even showing up as an option. for the iPod sync functions and the itms, this is a great program, but i don't know if it's worth another day of fighting...

joecoolio

Oct 20, 2003, 03:52 PM

I just tried to play a CD in iTunes on my PC running Win2k. It shows up the CD on the left, the tracks on the right, but when I press play it never plays. It just goes to the next song, then looks like it's trying to read then moves to the next song, then so on and so on. I tried multiple CDs and also can play the CDs on the same computer with Music Match and it works. Also looked at that GearSecurity and it was already running. Anyone hear of this problem?

Frisco

Oct 22, 2003, 04:10 PM

Okay Apple has updates iTunes.
Hope fully it will fix your problems.
You can download it from Apple today, but it will be made available in the Check for Updates feature tomorrow.

There is a CNET article about it.

Article Here (http://news.com.com/2100-1040_3-5095039.html?tag=nefd_top)

bardwell

Nov 7, 2003, 05:09 AM

I have installed iTunes 4.4.1 and it recognised my CD-ROM drive fine. However, when I put any CD in the machine, iTunes thinks I have 10 tracks which last less than a minute and 2 tracks of 15 hours - Nice.

It's a great mp3 player though, but until they sort out some of the basics, I don't see how they could make a convert to iTunes.

I'm hoping apple really rushed this release, and it wasn't down to incompetence.

sanifeivel

Nov 10, 2003, 09:11 AM

Hi,

I had exactly the same problem with playing audio CDs in iTunes and this post worked!
The problem seemed to be the stopped service on my machine.

Thanks a lot for your help!!!

But I'm suffering from two other problems:
1) Does anyone know, when the Music Store is available in Germany?

2) Connection to the Internet:
At work I need to specify a proxy to access the Internet.
When iTunes tries to connect to the CDDB or anything other
it's not working.
Any suggestions here???

Thanks a lot
Stefan

Originally posted by Frisco
I got this from another post. See if it helps.

You need to manually enable a "service" on Windows 2000/XP machines

Here's how:

First, make sure you have administrative right to your PC

Go to the control panel --> Open Administrative Tools

Double click on Services, from the list on the right, find an item called "GEARSecurity". Double click on the item, a new window will show up.

Start the service by clicking on Start. It will take a while.

After the service has been started, run iTunes.

flounder

Nov 13, 2003, 05:58 PM

I just got a new 12in powerbook and i seem to have the same problem which is really weird since itunes is for the mac, maybe i just dont know what i am doing but it worked before i update with the new itunes patch and now it does not. Can anyone direct me to an answer or help me out, i do appreciate it....and i love this machine

ElTyranos

Nov 26, 2003, 05:25 PM

Hi there! This post might please some of you guys who are having trouble readind and burning cds with iTunes for Windows. Having experienced this problem too, I have been looking for the solution for a while now and tried every remedy for it, including the replacement of GEAR drivers. Why not? For my part, it did not have anything to do with iTunes itself, or drivers or whatsoever... but from Windows' tendency to assign .dlls with the wrong program. Here's how I solved the problem:
- find the directory where iTunes is installed: it should be "C:\Program Files\iTunes" by default.
- open the sub-directory called "CD Configuration" in which you can find three files called "gcdrdll; gcdroem; gcdrtype".
- if it is not the case, reassign these files to iTunes, period. Right click on each of them, choose "Open with" and select iTunes in the list. Don't forget to check the box at the bottom of this window that says something like "Always open with the selected application" (I'm french, so this is a translation attempt, I don't know if it is exactly the same in the english version... :p )
- Click Ok, and this is it! iTunes should open then, your burner and audio cds should be detected now... Well I hope so!

By the way, Apple rules!
;)

Bye!

cuppajane

Jan 16, 2004, 03:42 PM

ElTyranos, thank you for this fantastic info! so far it has worked. I'm not a super computery person but my gut was telling me that it was windows trying to reign supreme. I did everything all these folks [in this string] and it was making me NUTS! Nothing like having a brand new computer that actually works now!!

kiss, kiss (you know that european cheek thing!)

Wes

Jan 16, 2004, 05:18 PM

Originally posted by cuppajane
[in this string]
This made me laugh out loud, it's a thread not a string. Glad your iTunes works well now. :)

syclone

Jan 16, 2004, 06:46 PM

Not sure if this will help, but:
Me and a fried w/ windows were experiencing the same problem and nothing, even the complicated stuff would help. It took about an hour, but we found a simple solution.

If your computer has two drives, put the cd in the burner. That solved the problem. iTunes prefers to read it from there, even though other programs on his computer wouldnt recognize it

cuppajane

Jan 16, 2004, 08:43 PM

okay okay, i said something very silly and ignorant. at least i won't make that mistake twice! how embarrassing!

so this problem which i thought was solved just got thicker. most recently, when i put in the cd (either drive) itunes starts. better than before though when nothing happened. so i jumped through all the hoops [mentioned in this THREAD] and this was a clincher, remove the cd drives from the system, restart etc.. and then put in the cd and importing commenced. it's usually when i go to load another cd that failure happens. eyes crossed!

(i'm sure i said something else embarrassing-just lemme know!)

eagerly learning here...

syclone - when it works, both drives are successful-i thought what you recommended early on in this viscious game of solitaire!

if anyone can think of why it works after all the hoop jumping for one session and then doesn't work after that would be super.
thanks!

cuppajane

Jan 16, 2004, 09:21 PM

"so this problem which i thought was solved just got thicker. most recently, when i put in the cd (either drive) itunes starts."

program loads, importing does not work-can't drag into column or anything.

jtf

Jan 21, 2004, 07:21 PM

Had this problem with brand new iPod on brand new HP. Tried everything. Finally took it in for service, paid $40 bucks and the folks laughed that I was paying to have an iPod installed (ha ha). A week later (ha ha) they finally fixed the problem. Said they had to "disable smart card icon in Explorer view." Whatever that means. Said it was a serious and widespread incompatibility problem and wished Apple got their act together! Grrrr.

Veldcath

Feb 20, 2004, 09:46 AM

Chalk another one up for this mystery. You all are going to love this.

Hardware:
Athlon 2200
512 MB
IDE Chains:
0:0 - 80 GB 7200 RPM
0:1 - DVD-ROM CDRW
1:0 - DVD+-RW
1:1 - 80 GB 5400 RPM

When I first ripped all my music, the machine only had an 80 GB, the DVD-ROM/CDRW and a CDRW. I pulled the CDRW and put in a DVD+-RW and added the 5400. Some time after that, iTunes stopped recognizing EITHER drive for ripping. Also, recently my DVD+-RW can't burn anything but coasters.

I swapped the DVD+-RW up to the master position on IDE1 and iTunes was able to burn and rip without problems. Now, a week and a half later, iTunes again won't recognize the drive, even after doing everything mentioned above.

Veldcath

Feb 20, 2004, 10:45 AM

Update: I got iTunes working again. In my Device Manager, there was a "VOBID InstantDrive CD SCSI CdRom Device" that got installed along with my DVD+-RW drive. I 'disabled' that and iTunes rips just fine again. Very strange.

-V

JoeJack

Mar 16, 2004, 08:23 PM

I have an HP with Windows XP and I just got iTunes. The thing that is driving me crazy is that iTunes will only play and rip one audio cd per session. I'm having the problem other people in this thread have that the audio cd is not being recognized by iTunes. (When I click to the audio cd icon to play the cd, iTunes opens up but nothing else happens.) BUT, if I re-start the computer while the audio cd is still in the cd-rom drive, iTunes will automatically open up and get the cd track names. I can play it and rip it. But I cannot do the same thing with another audio cd unless I re-start the computer again.

There must be a way to get iTunes to play the cd without restarting the computer every time. Windows Media Player can play the audio cds without the need to restart the computer. (I like iTunes better, and I want it to work.)

kx250

Mar 20, 2004, 09:13 PM

I have the same problem wont burn CD's and will not play CD's,
I tried the other suggestions, but none work.
Here's how I can get it to work but is a pain in the but.
This is for PC with a lite-On 411s DVDRW/CDRW.
I have to turn on itunes, go to device manager uninstall my Lite-on then go to add hardware and let windows redetect my Drive. then the CD will show up on Itunes. I have to do this every time I want to burn or play/import CD's.
for xp make sure you have gear service running and also I think I had to start the IMAPI CD-Burning COM service.

Kme

Apr 4, 2004, 10:31 PM

hello... I know this thread is quite dated but it addresses a current problem. I found the post made by Veldcath about disabling a cd drive, and it proved to help me alot.

I use software known as "Daemon Tools" (I use version 3.02) which creates a 'virtual CD drive' out of a CD image file (e.g.- .iso, .cue, .cdi, etc.) so you can use the data from them without having to burn them. I went into device manager and disabled the driver for it. Without restarting, I was able to go into itunes and have it recognize cds, rip cds, and burn cds without a problem at all. Even after several restarts I havent encountered any further issues.

As for how a 'virtual drive' could impact software like itunes?... I have no idea, but it seems to have worked quite well. Good luck!

--- Kme