I have an HP SR5223WM desktop with an Asus M2N 68-LA motherboard (Vista 32 Home Basic). My CD and DVD-RW drives stopped reading discs but still show as installed and in device manager. The system will not reinstall their drivers. Any suggestions on how to return them to previously working conditions?

There are a few options we can try including using System Restore, updating the drivers manually, and using a Microsoft “Fix It” tool.

System Restore

First, if your CD and DVD drives just recently stopped reading discs, it could be a problem related to a bad operating system update or file corruption. If so, and if you have a current System Restore point, you can use System Restore to roll back your system to an earlier point in time. Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore and choose a restore point from before the drive issues occurred. System Restore will recommend a restore point, usually the most recent one. If the problem has been going on for some time, you’ll want to click on “Choose a different restore point.” System Restore will then list recent restore points. These may not go back far enough in which case you will need to check the box that says, “Show restore points older than 5 days.”

System Restore has its limitations. First, System Protection must be turned on. If you turned it off, you won’t have a restore point at all. Next, older restore points are eventually overwritten by new ones, so you can’t go too far back in time.

Update Drivers

If System Restore doesn’t do the trick, you can try updating the CD/DVD device drivers again. How did you initially try updating them? Via Windows Update? Device Manager? These methods are only as good as the drivers that Microsoft has on file. Since your system didn’t update the device drivers, it’s possible that Microsoft doesn’t have new drivers on file for your drives. Check with the CD/DVD drives’ manufacturers for updated drivers and then install them following the manufacturer’s instructions.

Another trick that you can try with Device Manager is to “uninstall” the drives. Once uninstalled, reboot Windows. Windows will then detect the “new” hardware and install the most current drivers for your drives. To do this, go into Device Manager, right-click the drive that you want to uninstall, and choose “Uninstall” from the menu.

Microsoft Diagnostic Tool

Finally, Microsoft has a “Fix It” diagnostic tool designed specifically for diagnosing and repairing issues such as CD and DVD drives failing to read discs. You can read more about this particular tool and download it for free at Microsoft’s Help and Support Web site.   

Catalyst Enterprises - Drivers

Company Name: Catalyst Enterprises

Description: Catalyst Enterprises is a company that was introduced to the global market in 1992. The company is principally located at Santa Clara, California, USA.

The company provides protocol tests and validation solutions to various companies involved in developing technologies. Typically, the companies served are those that develop the Universal Serial Bus, Serial ATA, PCI Express, Peripheral Component Interconnect, Serial Attached SCSI and PCI-X.

Products of Catalyst Enterprises are used by a large number of consumers to assist them in manufacturing certain products for its own clients. Some of Catalyst’s customers include computer makers, developers of software, value-added resellers, system integrators, manufacturers of computer peripherals, storage product developers, networking companies and component manufacturers. With the company’s products, users may enhance the overall quality of work and be compliant with all the required industry standards for the user’s own products.

Catalyst Enterprises acknowledges with an increasing number of testing requirements, the demand for protocol and architecture-specific instruments had also risen. The answers to these demands are provided by Catalyst Enterprises through the wide array of Catalyst’s products.

Catalyst Enterprises offers a wide range of solutions for PCI/PCI Express, USB, Storage, Adapters Wireless and Extenders. Under the product PCI/PCI Express, the company provides solutions CatScan/CatScan Pro and PCI-X.

Under the product Storage, options are available for SAS/SATA Error Injector, SAS/SATA Analyzer/Exerciser and ATA Analyzer. Under the USB solutions product, the company provides options Conquest and Conquest Pro.

The company also offers the EUSB Analyzer as part of its Wireless solutions.

All of thee product solutions offered by Catalyst Enterprises are specifically designed to meet the customer’s particular needs. Its products enable Performance Analysis, Real-time Protocol Error Detection, Triggering methods and Performance Characterization.

Catalyst Enterprises also provides a wide range of online support that facilitates technical and sales inquiry, manual and datasheet downloads and software upgrades and repairs. The online support also provides information to users about the company’s seminars, tradeshows and seminars that are usually held by the company.

While the trainings are primarily found in Santa Clara, California, the seminars are made available through the company’s distributors in Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe and Australia. The company can also extend its accommodation to its customers in the United States and Canada through online shopping.

Brainboxes - Download Device Drivers 

Company Name: Brainboxes

Description:   Brainboxes was founded in 1984 as a privately-held company with its headquarters in Liverpool United Kingdom.  The company is involved in the design and manufacture of add-on cards for computers.  Developments in R&D manufacturing have given Brainboxes a product reputation described as highly configurable, easy to use and extremely dependable. 

The company has the following people as its top executives: Eamonn Walsh (Chairman and Technical Director), Stephan Evans (Managing Director), Patricia Walsh (Financial Director) and Owen Scullion (Sale Manager).

Several recognitions that the company has received include awards like “Best Mobile Computing”, “European Manufacturer of the Year” and “Best Meyerside Export Award”.

In 1994, Brainboxes was a part of the first batch of companies who achieved a global ISO9001 standard in quality management.  The year of 2001 saw Brainboxes move into the ISO9001: 2000 standard, covering all aspects of design and manufacture of Brainboxes products, as well as customer support.

Brainboxes technical expertise and dedication to wireless technology earned them the reputation of being one of the 50 companies around the globe to carry a Bluetooth SIG product, which is the Bluetooth PCMCIA card.   This illustrates the position of the company to be at the development forefront of wireless technology. 

Brainboxes focuses on the production line for Bluetooth technology, RS232 and RS422/485.  Their Bluetooth technology has been used for several wireless applications in the engineering business.  Other industries that use Brainboxes products include medical, banking, marketing and clothing sectors.  In addition the company also designs software drivers.

One of the products of Brainboxes is the Type 1 Compact Flash Card; it allows communication to be possible between a PDA and other devices with Bluetooth.  It has an easily upgradeable firmware while supporting several Bluetooth profiles.  Brainboxes’ Bluetoooth technology is able to operate at a rate of 14 dBm.

Another impressive product of Brainboxes is their RD232 Adapter.  It allows connection of a device that has an RS232 to any bluetooth device.  Communication is made possible between the two devices without having to install additional software. Other items distributed by Brainboxes are Bluetooth Adapters, Bluetooth connectors, PCI Serials, PCMCIA and Express Card serials.

The Brainboxes Express Card was released in June 19, 2008 as the answer to supply the growing requirement for connectivity products that have smaller and thinner designs.

Brainboxes have customers like Motorola, Reuters, IBM, BT and Agilent.  The company has bluetooth software that has been adopted by Microsoft Corporation, which is used to support some of its products.  Fujitsu has also agreed to a partnership in 1997 with Brainboxes to supply their serial cards.

2L International Download Drivers 

Company: 2L International

Description: A member of the Tulip Company, the European based technological company 2L International B.V. maintains offices in both Spain and the Netherlands.  2L International is responsible for providing software and hardware solutions to the mobile and connectivity markets mostly in the European continent. 

The management team of the company includes efficient executives like Petra Pel (Business Unit Manager), Roel Brandenburg (Account Manager), Van Til (Product Manager), Kjeld Beijer (Director for Marketing & Development), and Dennis Slagers (Manager for Technical Product Development).

The mobility solutions of the company are marketed and distributed under the PaceBlade brand.  These products include various multifunctional applications for businesses along with advanced tablet personal computer systems.  The company’s products find a wide array of usage in the development and manufacturing, logistics, transport, industrial, and medical industries.  2L International capably provides IT solutions to the various needs of these industries.

The usage of the PaceBlade brand began sometime in 2004 when Tulip Computers acquired its technologies.  With the acquisition, PaceBlade represented the company’s operation in the development, manufacturing, and distribution of high quality tablet format computer systems.  These tablet computers symbolizes the company’s hardware solution for computer mobility.  Support of the PaceBlade line is primarily handled by Nedfield Holding.  PaceBlade maintains offices in Amsterdam, Germany, and Taiwan.

Aside from PaceBlade, 2L International was also responsible for the introduction of the Conceptronic and the Dynalink product lines.  Dynalink represents the hardware solution for telecommunications and data communications like ADSL and ISDN devices. 

Conceptronic on the other hand is used by the company for the promotion of its multiple products and services encompassing data communication, wireless, multimedia, and connectivity solutions.  Dynalink has become an established name in the Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg (Benelux) markets.

Although focused on the European market, the company also maintains a customer base of companies with established reputation in the global market ensuring their rapid growth in their various industries.  To address the demands of the international community, the company maintains strategic partnerships and collaboration.

With the mobility (PaceBlade) and connectivity (Conceptronic and Dynalink) solutions of the company, being handled with clear definition, the IT market is assured not only of quality but comprehensive products as well.  Not only are the company’s products of the highest quality (with reasonable cost), but they also conform to RoHS and CE standards which are required in the European markets. 

2L International’s leadership in the European data communication market is cemented by its various support companies and brand name products as well.

Avigramm Drivers Download 

Company: Avigramm

Description: Avigramm Technology Corp. is a company based in Tsin Chu, Taiwan which specializes in manufacturing PC cameras, color scanners and other computer peripherals. The company conducts business in pure ODM and OEM capacities and also manufactures private brands for various foreign clients from the United States, Italy, Spain, China and Japan.

The company was established in 1997 and from the start was focused on the production of Internet-related graphics, image, video and audio products. It has more than 30 workers and has offices located in San Jose, California and Cologne, Germany to effectively serve international customers. James Gan is Avigramm’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing.

Avigramm Technology Corp. is known for its MiniDoc scanner, which pioneered in a breakthrough solution of providing a transportable USB scanner with its own rechargeable battery. The scanner is available in white, red, orange and blue colors and is compatible in both Macintosh and Windows systems. In the year 2000, Avigramm also introduced the revolutionary MiniClip, the world’s smallest USB device for video capture. It that same year, the company also launched a portable fax scanner geared for employment in the Internet.

On January 24, 2000, Avigramm Technology Corp. signed a partnership and bundling deal with ABBYY USA in which Avigramm bundled ABBYY’s FineReader 4.0 Sprint OCR software with its MiniDoc scanners for its worldwide distribution. FineReader 4.0 is based on the FineReader Engine, which has garnered 20 exceptional awards from top global magazines as of January 2000. FineReader is capable of recognizing 53 languages and its Windows interface is provided in 10 different languages. It features a user-friendly one-push button function and is capable of transferring results directly to various formats, including TXT, RTF, MS Excel, MS Word, Word Pro, and WordPerfect. The FineReader Engine is equipped with perception technology known as Integral Purposeful Adaptive (IPA) that utilizes an algorithm for structural patterns for character recognition in combination with other popular algorithms, such as the raster classifiers and feature classifiers. With its outstanding performance in morphology and these algorithms, FineReader is capable of accurate recognition even with documents produced from various sources such as fax machines, photocopiers, typewriters and dot-matrix printers.

Avigramm’s claim to fame comes from its portable scanners, particularly the MiniDoc, which is available and sought after in various parts of the world.

Aktiv Drivers Download 

Company: Aktiv Company

Description: Aktiv Co. is a Russian manufacturer of hardware and software information security products under the Guardant trademark. It is one of the leaders in the manufacturing and development of security solutions. The company maintains its headquarters in Moscow, Russia. 

Aktiv Co. develops custom-made electronic devices and anti-piracy hardware keys. It protects applications from illegal copying and unauthorized distribution and use.

It produces the Guardant Net II and the Guardant Stealth II dongles. A dongle, a small hardware device attachable to a computer, allows secured software to operate.

The Stealth II dongle has a wide range of hardware capacities ensuring high-level security. Its major features are 256-byte non-volatile memory, hardware-based programmable user data protection, three passwords for dongle access, and a complex protection system based on onboard one-way data conversion algorithms and symmetric data encryption. It is compatible with DOS, Win16, and Win32.

The Net II dongle has the same protective attributes as the Stealth II, except for the need for multiple dongles. It also lessens license cost.

The microcontroller is the major technology behind the Guardant dongles. It is a flexible device that can be “taught” to solve different protection tasks. The microcontroller’s micro-programs used to execute hardware algorithms that cannot be read or modified. The hardware algorithms are responsible for impossibly removing API function cells from the application, making data decoding unfeasible. The GSII64, a block algorithm newly developed for Guardant dongles, is defiant to cryptanalysis.

Aside from the Guardant dongles, the company also produces Guardant software development tools. These are the dongle functional tests, and search and programming utilities. It also provides dongle drivers and the Guardant Application Programming Interface.

Another popular product called the ruToken has a USB for its base authentication token which supports different acknowledged standards such as PC/SC, ISO/IEC 7816, GOST 28147-89, Microsoft Smartcard API, PKCS#11 (v. 2.10+) and Microsoft Crypto API. It uses state-of-the-art technology which is not only cost effective, but also in authenticating users.

In January 29, 2004; Aktiv Company and Dekart, which is described as a first-rate dealer of cryptographic technologies, merged ruToken into Dekart’s data authentication and privacy solutions, to offer enterprise and individual users with better option of the port-based USB authentication tokens working with Dekart’s password solutions.