Free CD's that will not load

Rashers72

Hi all,
Tried to google an answer on this but no joy, so wondering if someone can help me.
I'm trying to help a friend...it's a well known branded medium spec pc bought via phone/internet, with an admin user, and a general user set up by a friend of his. He also uses Firefox (don't know if this matters).
When he tries to load some of the free cd's you get with Sunday magazines/ breakfast cereals, while the cd runs, and the flash part starts, when you click on install, nothing happens. When I try to run it via start.exe etc. nothing happens also.
I think the guy who set it up at the start, may have someone removed the ability to load CD's, for security/kid's reasons?
I think certain CD's load ok though, but only 1-2 of his collection. And if memory serves me correctly, it is both users who cannot load the CD's.
I tried one of the CD's on my pc, and it loaded fine.
Any thoughts?

(Apologies if this is the wrong forum!)

nobodythere

Very strange... it would tell you if it was stopping the cd from running though.

Try updating firmware on the CD drive maybe?

Rashers72

How do you do that?

nobodythere

Right click my computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> DVD and CD ROM drives.

The make and model of your drive should be there. Look for firmware updates off manufacturers site.

What OS are you using?

jor el

Rashers72 wrote:

When he tries to load some of the free cd's you get with Sunday magazines/ breakfast cereals, while the cd runs, and the flash part starts, when you click on install, nothing happens. When I try to run it via start.exe etc. nothing happens also.
I think the guy who set it up at the start, may have someone removed the ability to load CD's, for security/kid's reasons?

If the disc menu loads then there's noting blocking the CD from loading and should be nothing requiring a firmware upgrade either. I'm not aware of anything that could stop this anyway, short of disabling the CD drive in device manager, but that would stop it working completely. Autoplay could be disabled, but forcing the program to run via the Start.exe would get around that so that's not it either.

Search for *.exe on the disc and see if there are any other executables, like an install.exe or gamename.exe in a sub folder perhaps?

My uncle always tries to use these free CDs too and sometimes they work and sometimes not. I think it's mainly down to cheap and badly written Flash programs not working on some computers because of missing support files. It works on yours because your OS has some required files present, but his doesn't. What these are and how they were installed is anyone's guess.

Tom Dunne

Rashers72 wrote:

Hi all,
Tried to google an answer on this but no joy, so wondering if someone can help me.
I'm trying to help a friend...it's a well known branded medium spec pc bought via phone/internet, with an admin user, and a general user set up by a friend of his. He also uses Firefox (don't know if this matters).
When he tries to load some of the free cd's you get with Sunday magazines/ breakfast cereals, while the cd runs, and the flash part starts, when you click on install, nothing happens. When I try to run it via start.exe etc. nothing happens also.
I think the guy who set it up at the start, may have someone removed the ability to load CD's, for security/kid's reasons?
I think certain CD's load ok though, but only 1-2 of his collection. And if memory serves me correctly, it is both users who cannot load the CD's.
I tried one of the CD's on my pc, and it loaded fine.
Any thoughts?

(Apologies if this is the wrong forum!)

What operating system?

Rashers72

XP - it's the same on both PC's.....