Tuesday, December 24, 2013

PE: Burner Location: No Burners Found

INTRODUCTION

Recently I was gifted with an Apple TV unit. In preparation for its setup and use, I was checking out iTunes 64 bit (latest version 11.1.3.8) installed on my Windows Professional 7 SP1 64 bit computer and got hit with the following message.

Figure 1. iTunes 64 Bit Windows Missing Drivers Message.
I had not installed other CD or DVD burning software.

When I reinstalled iTunes as suggested by the warning/error message, the above message no longer appeared. However, when I went to open a Premiere Elements 11 project on this computer, there were no burners listed in the Burner Location field of the burn dialog. A System Restore resolved this immediate Windows and Premiere Elements issue. But I was left with the original iTunes issue. This kind of problem appears to be involved with the Gear drivers used in iTunes.

All this seems to be a known* iTunes issue. A sampling of Apple documents that offers fixes for this can be found

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts2308

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3299

I do not use iTunes to create audio CDs or burn DVDs, and the existing situation was somehow allowing me to import CDs, so, until forced to, I was thinking that I could put troubleshooting this matter aside for another day rather than get involved with Windows/Premiere Elements recognition. of burners.

I thought it important to bring this information to the attention of the Premiere Elements users who suddenly found that there was nothing listed in burner location in the burn dialog and wondered why? The above may not be the answer for all or any. But, if the Premiere Elements user has this burner location empty, one of the possibilities to check would be the status of iTunes if iTunes was part of the computer community.

I was ready to leave the matter unresolved from the point of view of iTunes and be content knowing that Premiere Elements burner location was recognizing the computer's burners, when the solution was found in a iTunes user's comment about step 12 in the Apple document "iTunes for Windows: "Registry settings" warning when opening iTunes".

SOLUTION

The results of the solution to be described include
  • Using iTunes 64 bit (version 11.1.3.8) without problems related to "drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing" and consequently no more error message (See Figure 1) when opening iTunes
  • Using Premiere Elements in which its burner dialog/burner location listed system burners
Uninstalled iTunes.....iTunes problem resolved, but Premiere Elements burn dialog/burner location burner listings gone.

System Restore.....iTunes problem back, but Premiere Elements burn dialog/burner location burner listings restored.

Manually deleted the GEAR entries in the Registry as per Solution 3 here, And installed updated GEAR driver (4.020.5) from here according to Solution 3.....that did not resolve the problem.

Subsequent iTunes uninstalls/reinstalls...no solution except that the driver part of the error message was gone so that the message now read only that iTunes was not properly installed.

Then went thru the Gear driver removal from Registry and type in again from here, but this time, at step 12, followed the comment of an iTunes user (b noir) with this type of issue..
At step 12 after typing GEARAspiWDM, press Enter/Return key once prior to clicking OK.
It worked! No more iTunes CD/DVD "importing and burning" issues/no more error message to that effect when opening program and Premiere Elements burn dialog/burner location displaying all burner choices.

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*A Google Search revealed numerous Apple and iTunes user articles on this matter.


ATR