Cannot access CD/DVD drive with Windows Explorer

When you try to explore the content of a DVD or CD drive in XP Embedded with your Windows explorer nothing happens or the explorer will automatically jumps to the next item in the folder list. By using the command line you can access the CD/DVD drive without problem and you are able to run applications too.

This behavior is can be caused if you have a CD/R(W) drive and you added the IMAPI – CD Burning component and use Minlogon. In this case Windows tries to access the temporary write cache which is normally located in the documents and settings folder for the user but with Minlogon this folder does not exist.

To resolve this error just open the properties of the CD/R(W) drive and go to the Recording tab. In this tab disable the “Enable CD recording on this device” checkbox and click ok. Now you can access the CD/DVD drive again.