Code 19, missing CD drives, iTunes and you

Code 19, missing CD drives, iTunes and you

I recently rebooted my PC and noticed my CDRom drives had all disappeared.  Not only that, but the machine was acting strangely too.  I looked at the drives, and saw each of the devices was disabled with this message:

Code 19: Windows cannot start this hardware device because its configuration information (in the registry) is incomplete or damaged

A quick Google turns up this article:

A registry problem was detected. This can occur when more than one service is defined for a device, if there is a failure opening the service registry entry, or if the driver name cannot be obtained from the service registry entry.

Try these options:

  • Click Uninstall, and then click Scan for hardware changes to load a usable driver.
  • If the device is a CD or DVD drive, follow the procedure in Article ID 929461 on the Microsoft Web site (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=192798).
  • Restart the computer in Safe Mode, and then select Last Known Good Configuration. This rolls back to the most recent successful registry configuration.

When that didn’t work, I followed the link to article 929461 and tried this:

To resolve this problem, remove the affected filter drivers. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then click regedit in the Programs list.
  2. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password or click Continue.
  3. Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
    There can be many instances of the registry subkey that is mentioned in step 3. You must make sure that you are in the appropriate registry subkey before you change the UpperFilters and the LowerFilters values.
  4. To verify that you are in the appropriate registry subkey, make sure that the Default value is DVD/CD-ROM and the Class value is CDROM.
  5. If you see UpperFilters in the pane on the right side, right-click UpperFilters, and then click Delete.
  6. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.
  7. If you see LowerFilters in the pane on the right side, right-click LowerFilters, and then click Delete.
  8. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.
  9. Exit Registry Editor, and then restart the computer.

When I did this, I found that Upperfilters pointed to GEARAspiWDM.sys.  The Lowerfilters pointed to a program I knew.  In searching for GEARAspiWDM.sys, Google reveals:
http://www.file.net/process/gearaspiwdm.sys.htm

Many of the comments imply this file and service comes with iTunes.  Sure enough, I had just un-installed of iTunes 11 and the done a fall-back install of iTunes 10.7 (due to the fact they broke drag-and-drop).  I removed the filter and then remove/added each drive in turn.  The drives returned like normal and the system returned to full performance.

Thanks again Apple – for your cr*ppy iTunes software.

 

One thought on “Code 19, missing CD drives, iTunes and you

  1. Thank you so much for this post! Followed your instructions, fixed my Code 19 problem, and got my DVD drive working again! 🙂

    Thanks again.

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