iTunes ate my optical drive!

I hates me some Windows. I’m not too happy with Apple at the moment, either. The last time I upgraded iTunes, my CD/DVD burner disappeared. Completely. Didn’t show up in iTunes, didn’t show up in Windows. Nada. I searched online for the problem, and tried various solutions, but nothing worked. I finally did solve the problem, so I’m going to describe my fix here.

BTW, this is for iTunes x64 9.1.1 on 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.

When I first noticed the issue, I went to Device Manager in the Control Panel, where I found my CD/DVD drive was disabled due to Error Code 19, missing or damaged configuration info in the registry. I tried one suggested fix, deleting the UpperFilter registry key. My drive was back, but then iTunes launched with an error message, that registry info related to CD burning in iTunes was corrupted, and I had to reinstall. So I  did that, and my drive went AWOL. I was back where I started.

I tried using the Microsoft Automated Troubleshooting Service (MATS) utility from the MS support website, but it couldn’t find the problem.

The problem is related to the GEARAspiWDM.sys driver which iTunes installs, so I tried downloading the driver from the manufacturer:

http://gearsoftware.com/support/drivers.php

It installed fine, but still no drive showing up. However, now I had a different error code, Code 38, that the driver couldn’t be loaded because the old driver was still in memory. I ran the MATS utility again. The first iteration told me to check the device properties to address the driver conflict. I uninstalled the driver, and let MATS do a second run, at the end of which it reported multiple issues, but said they were fixed. Then I just had to restart, and everything’s working fine.

The very first thing I tried was uninstalling the driver and letting Windows reinstall it, but this didn’t help at all. It’s possible that uninstalling the driver, and then running the GEAR driver installer, might have been enough, but I have a hunch that the MATS utility did a little more than just juggling driver versions. If the simpler method does work for anybody, please let me know.

Hope this helps!

Care to comment?

So I’m exploring some of the newer social web services and applications, and in the process of playing with them, tricking out my blog a bit. The first change readers might notice is that in place of the standard Blogger comment form, Caveat Scriptor is now using Disqus for comments.

What will this mean for you, gentle reader? Well, first off it means added functionality. Instead of having to sign in with either a Google account or an OpenID, you can now connect via Facebook or Twitter. In addition, you can share your comments via Facebook, Twitter, and many other services. Plus, comments can now be threaded/nested, allowing for real discussion rather than a flat list of context-less comments.

For my part, it means simplified moderation and administration. Disqus integrates Akismet for spam protection, and has a set of automatic moderation tools that will make my life much easier.

So, please, try out the Disqus comment system. I hope it works out. If not, I can always delete it.

Eleven years?

The internet is supposed to be amazing because it’s like this fast-forward future, but the internet always amazes me the most when it spontaneously and unexpectedly connects me to the past… for instance, this photo which recently popped up on my Facebook profile:

I was really cute in high school! I mean, I still am, but I didn’t appreciate my cuteness then the way I do now. Older and wiser, I suppose…

Knitter’s Little Helper

So I was checking out the list of sites built with Ruby on Rails when I came across what is possibly the best knitting website in the history of ever.

It’s called Ravelry, and it’s an incredible tool for knitters and crocheters. Ravelry is built around an interactive ‘knitter’s notebook’ with sections for tracking your projects, patterns, books, and other supplies. It will even help you keep track of your yarn stash, something which most knitters had thought to be impossible.

But what’s truly amazing is what happens when the full power of a database-driven web application is put to work organizing your knitting projects.

Ravelry doesn’t just list your yarns, patterns, et cetera; it cross-references everything so you can concentrate on… knitting!

Say you’re browsing the web and you come across a sock pattern you’re just dying to make. you click a bookmarklet, and the pattern is added to your ‘project queue,’ projects you want to make eventually, but not quite yet. From there you can check the yarn requirements against your stash, see what yarn you still need to purchase, find the yarn online, and so on. once you’re ready to begin, you can move the project out of the queue to your active projects, mark your stash yarn as used, and so on.

Ravelry’s other major strength is its social networking features. You can browse other users’ patterns and projects, discuss what your working on and problems you’re having, and so on. plus, if you see something you want to make, Ravelry can tell you if the pattern is in a book you already have, available for download, or where to find it. You can also buy/sell/trade yarn, and probably a million other things I haven’t found yet.

I’ll probably be posting more on this topic later; I just discovered the site, so I’m still exploring.

Launch!

Yep, I’m back in the blogosphere (although I hate that word, and hopefully that will be the first and last time I use it on this blog… or ever, for that matter).

So what will I be blogging about this time?

Well, mostly this, a bit of that, and a fair amount of the other.

More specifically:

• Social commentary and links to news I find relevant or just infotaining.
• Web application development using Ruby on Rails (primarily), as well as some AJAX and mod_perl.
• Musings and observations about my life, or possibly your life.

Yeah… so read, comment, subscribe to my feed… If people keep reading, I’ll keep posting, to keep people reading. And commenting. And subscribing. See how this works? You click my blog, I’ll click yours.

See you soon. (Not literally, unless you have a webcam link on your blog… but you get the point).