Vista - How do I know which drivers are bad?

How do i know which drives are bad?
How do I know if I should un-install certain drivers before downloading new ones?
For instance, I do know there is probably some bad drivers with my Windows CD and DVD Maker b/c i cant burn music or photos or even make a DVD. My computer is not recognizing my burner.
Thanks...

You shouldn't need drivers for your CD/DVD Burner, the one that Vista has is more than ok... unless of course you are talking about a very old ROM you just installed and vista can't even recognize it... we are getting ahead of ourselves here though.

I think you may be missing plugins for your CD/DVD ROM and/or program and this is why you can't burn.

Why don't you start by posting your system specs and telling us what, exactly you want to do.

Hi,

When you say it's not recognizing your burner - do you mean your dvd drive, or your 3rd party burning program ?

You might try seeing if have the famous Upper and Lower filters problem. This M$ KB shows how to remove them - it says XP -the steps are similar for Vista.

You can no longer access the CD drive or the DVD drive, or you receive an error message after you remove a CD recording program or a DVD recording program in Windows XP: "error code 31"

Hope it helps
SIW2

Hi bluemoon, you may try this as directed by SIW2|
DVD Drive Icon Disappeared from Computer - Fix

Okay, I'll post my system specs but when i go to COMPUTER whch ones do I copy and paste back on here?

Hi,

To post system specs-click USER CP at the top of this page, click Edit System Spec ( on the left of the page, 2nd down ), Type your Specs, Save Changes (at bottom of page).

Or, click system specs at the bottom of one of your posts and click Update Your System Spec (in blue)



Hope it helps

SIW2

i would look in your bios at systen start up and make sure the drives are there and what DMA Mode they are in
if they are a older set of dvd/cd drives than they need to be set to UDMA4 or 5 mode or they wont be able to read the info from th Motherboard should be able to adjust them in cmos settings on bios