Solved CD-ROM properties for audio CD's shows as 0 bytes--why?

On a relative's HP laptop running Windows 8, she had a problem where burned CD-R audio discs showed up as empty and wouldn't play, no matter what program you used. This was odd, because it's the SAME CD-ROM DRIVE that was used to burn them. Immediately I suspected some kind of driver issue, so I uninstalled the default driver and then rebooted. When Windows automatically reconfigured/loaded the CD-ROM drive, the PC was finally able to see and use the media that had been burned on its own CD/DVD drive. Launching WMP resulted in music being played.

However... I'm still seeing an issue that has me perplexed. When looking at an audio CD-R or commercial audio CD in the DVD/CD-ROM drive, it always shows as containing 0 bytes. You can still see the track ".cda" files listed, which individually show a minimum of 1K size in the file listing display. Oddly, checking those files individually actually results in 2K shown for the details. I completely understand why 0 bytes free would show because the CD was finalized, but shouldn't the amount of bytes occupied by audio media show up with a particular byte count?

I haven't been able to find any information about this searching on-line, so I figured I'd ask here. Anybody have a clue?

First, there are NO drivers for any CD/DVD drive other than the built in Windows drivers. But an uninstall of the drive in the Device Manager then a PC restart and Windows detection and reinstall will fix many Windows corruption problems.

I do a lot of audio CD burning as I have a recording studio.

What you are seeing displayed is correct. I don't have an answer to why it shows up that way. Here is what one of my CD's shows:

Maybe because its an audio CD and not a Data CD? Different format from a Data disk.

fireberd said:

First, there are NO drivers for any CD/DVD drive other than the built in Windows drivers. But an uninstall of the drive in the Device Manager then a PC restart and Windows detection and reinstall will fix many Windows corruption problems.

I do a lot of audio CD burning as I have a recording studio.

What you are seeing displayed is correct. I don't have an answer to why it shows up that way.

Click to expand...

Thanks for confirming that what I'm seeing is correct. I couldn't find any info on-line that was able to confirm, so your response is much appreciated.