Remote Desktop problem: CD not recognized

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I use RDP to login to a system in our store. Both systems running Windows 7 Pro. If a music CD is in the CDROM drive on the remote system, I can see it in Windows Explorer and see the .cda files. But if I open Windows Media Player it just says “Unknown CD”. It won’t show or attempt to play the CD.

I have confirmed that an employee in the store can login to the system and open WMP and the CD is available and playable, so it has something to do with RDP.

I have confirmed that I can login to the system in the store with RDP and play a track that is already in the WMP library and it plays there. (Or here if I chose “Play on this computer” in my RDP options.) So it’s not a sound issue. It has something to do with the actual CD.

I have confirmed that this is true with many CDs – everyone we tried, so probably all CDs.

Can anyone tell me what to do so I can play a CD on a remote system while logged in with RDP?

Thanks.

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Try the portable version of VLC media player. (I don’t know if this will work, but it’s a no cost option.)

cheers, Paul

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Backspacer – I tried this with 2 Windows 7 PC’s and it didn’t work for me either at first… I could see the CD playing in the remote PC’s Media Player but couldn’t see a Playback device on the remote PC (even though I could see a Recording device on the remote PC).

I got it to work by:

1) Running MSTSC on the local PC from an account with Administrative privileges.

2) Changing the local MSTSC option for Remote audio playback to Play on remote computer.
39763-rdp_local_settings
Click to enlarge

3) RDP’ing to the Administrator account on the remote PC (I haven’t tried using an account with Administrative privileges or a less privileged account).

I can confirm that – if an audio CD is in the optical drive of the remote PC – it’s possible to control it (play, skip track, etc.) via RDP using WMP (and VLC… I checked :)).

Hope this helps…

PS – My local Explorer ‘view’ of the remote PC showed that the remote Explorer recognised the contents of the remote optical drive as an Audio CD. Is this what you see?

39765-rdp_remote_view
Click to enlarge

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Backspacer – I tried this with 2 Windows 7 PC’s and it didn’t work for me either at first… I could see the CD playing in the remote PC’s Media Player but couldn’t see a Playback device on the remote PC (even though I could see a Recording device on the remote PC).[/quote]

That’s different from what I see. I login to the remote PC, open WMP and it says “unknown CD” in the D drive and will not even attempt to play it.

If I look at the sound properties I do see a playback device and it is enabled. Additionally, I can play music that already exists on the PC and they hear it on the local speakers. The problem is that I cannot access a CD in the drive, though they can do so locally.

I got it to work by:

1) Running MSTSC on the local PC from an account with Administrative privileges.

2) Changing the local MSTSC option for Remote audio playback to Play on remote computer.

I always do these two.

3) RDP’ing to the Administrator account on the remote PC (I haven’t tried using an account with Administrative privileges or a less privileged account).

I do not know what the Administrator account password is on the remote system. The remote account I use does have administrator privileges.

I can confirm that – if an audio CD is in the optical drive of the remote PC – it’s possible to control it (play, skip track, etc.) via RDP using WMP (and VLC… I checked :)).

It is a feature of Windows that things only work if you do not need them.

PS – My local Explorer ‘view’ of the remote PC showed that the remote Explorer recognised the contents of the remote optical drive as an Audio CD. Is this what you see?

I think they removed the CD from the system and now they’ve gone home. I’ll ask them to put it back in tomorrow and will take a look.

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Backspacer – Whilst I have been able to get remote audio playback to work within a home, e.g. “Workgroup” environment, I don’t at present have any means to test within a work (e.g. “Domain”) environment.

Please clarify your present environment (Workgroup? Domain?) and provide an “Explorer view” screenshot of what the RDP remote view looks like from the local PC when an audio CD is inserted and recognised within the remote desktop environment.

If you can only see .cda files in the remote environment (from the local environment) then this suggests that the remote environment may not have its default ‘open with’ operators set correctly

Hope this helps…

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My environment is a workgroup. Physically there are two lans about 1200 miles apart connected by a VPN. I am on one, the store systems are on the other.

I’ll see if I can put a photo here showing the RDP session…

39787-Capture

You will notice that the audio CD is inserted but is not recognized. It just says “Unknown (D)” If I click on it, my click is ignored. If an employee were to login locally they would be able to play the CD. I cannot.
Ignore the Eva Cassidy information in the image. That just happens to be where the library was pointed when I did the screen grab. It remains in view when I click the D drive rather than recognizing the contents of the D drive correctly. The CD in the D drive is a different one.

Here is the RDP setup on my local system:

39788-Capture1

Here is the Playback device in the sound properties:

39791-Capture4

If you can only see .cda files in the remote environment (from the local environment) then this suggests that the remote environment may not have its default ‘open with’ operators set correctly

I’m not exactly sure what that means. I can see the .cda files from both systems.

Here is Windows Explorer on the remote system looking at its D drive while I am logged on to it via RDP:

39789-Capture2

I can also see the .cda tracks from my local computer using Windows Exporer’s Network section:

39790-Capture3

(Look at all those pictures. You have created a monster. I hope they all actually show up in my posting or I’ll have to get embarrassed…)

Which “open with” operators are we talking about? That’s a new one on me. Maybe that is the problem.

Thanks!

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…Which “open with” operators are we talking about?…

Rick means “file associations” – which program is set to open a particular file-type.

Look at Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsDefault ProgramsSet Default Programs and/or Control PanelAll Control Panel ItemsDefault ProgramsSet Associations.

But looking at your fourth-from-top screenshot it seems .cda is associated with Windows Media Player, so that doesn’t explain why WMP shows “Unknown D” in your first screenshot.

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Plus when an employee puts the CD in the drive and looks at it locally, the CD is there and playable. And even if .cda were associated with some other music player, WMP should still recognize and open a CD if asked to do so. And just to be sure I did go check and .cda is correctly associated with WMP.

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Backspacer – I can’t see any difference in your OS setup compared with mine… so that makes me think the problem may possibly be due to a restriction within a desktop security program. (I saw a Symantec folder in one of your screenshots.)

Are you able to temporarily disable any AV on the remote PC to see whether you can ‘Play’ from your local RDP session and get it to work on the remote PC?

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Thanks, Rick. I just went and checked, turned off both the firewall and antivirus and the CD is still not playable. So that isn’t it, though it’s another possibility knocked out. I should also mention that we used MSE and the native firewall for a few years before switching to Norton and we have had this same problem all along.

Could there be some weird digital rights management issue when trying to play a CD while logged in via RDP? It makes no sense, since I think the whole idea with the newer versions of Windows was to appeal to rich homeowners with extensive sound systems and such. You’d think other people would be logging into a PC remotely to start up music and setup playlists and the like.

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If AV isn’t the issue then does the remote Event Viewer show any issue(s) – either ‘Application’ or ‘System’ logs – when, from your local PC, you right-click on the remote audio CD showing on the remote system and choose ‘Play’?

Also, what version of mstsc.exe are you running at your (local) end? I’m using v6.2.9200.17053.

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I did as you ask. Play is grayed out because WMP does not recognize that there is a CD in the drive. If I hit the GUI’s Play button it assumes that I am not really talking about the CD and so it goes off to play some other music.

I looked at the even viewer after doing this. I found a system event saying:

“The Multimedia Class Scheduler service entered the running state.”

No application event was created.

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What version of mstsc.exe are you running at your (local) end?

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What version of mstsc.exe are you running at your (local) end?

6.3.9600

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Backspacer – I’m fairly sure it’s not a DRM issue (although this blog suggests it could be if you were trying to redirect the remote audio back to the client).

I’ve been able to play the remote audio CD from 3 different local PCs running different versions of mstsc so I guess that rules out it being an RDP client issue. I’ve also been able to remote into another PC (running Windows XP) and play the same audio CD.

Note that I have been using Administrator accounts on both local and remote PC’s. The moment I try to use a Standard user account on the remote PC then I am not able to use the remote PC’s Media Player controls for the CD drive (but can still play music stored in the library). This is what I think your problem is.

Hope this helps…

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The users on both local and remote system are in the Administrators group.

The pre-edited message which I received in the email notification of your comment, said that you did see the unknown CD in windows 10. Was that the standard user or did something else change? I’m interested because that is the first time you saw unknown-CD.

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Hi Backspacer – I edited my post about the use of Win 10 TP (as an ‘elevated’ user in the ‘Administrator’ group) because I couldn’t subsequently duplicate my experience, i.e. I believe it was a glitch of Win 10 TP caused by me running Media Player first (on the remote Win 10 TP box) then attempting to use RDP (from a local Win 7 box) to amend ‘playing’ (on the remote Win 10 TP box). As such, IMHO, it wasn’t a reliable source.

As a result I decided to use an available Win XP box (as this was more a ‘known quantity’) and look at ‘user permissions’ instead.

Does that make sense?

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Yes, it does. I just wish I could make sense of my problem. The link you gave in the previous message seemed to be where the CD on the remote system (the server in this example) was to be played on that system but the sound delivered through the local system. In my case I want a CD in a remote system to be played on that remote system and the sound from that CD to be delivered through that remote system to its speakers. In other words, I want it to work exactly as if I were logged in on the local console of that system. The only thing not happening on that remote system is that I am logging in remotely to start the CD. In fact, I want to be able to end my RDP session (or more likely, to have someone in the store “take” the system from me”) and the music will continue to play. We do this all day, every day for music which already resides on the hard drive of that system. But we also need to be able to play music from a CD.

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I doubt that it’s any help but… I’m having problems making sense of your problem too.

Your post #6 shows that – although the audio CD itself appears to be unrecognised – the audio tracks appear to be identified correctly by artist (e.g. Bob Acri and Eva Cassidy)… unless your screenshot is actually of your Media Guide. Please confirm…

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I know those durned tracks that you are seeing are a distraction. The screenshot does show the Library contents (is that the same as the media guide?) because it refuses to show what is on the CD. That’s what I mean when I say that I can play media that is already on the hard drive – in the Library – but cannot play a CD that is in the CD drive.

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OK, it sounds like what you are saying is your screenshot in post #6 is of the (partial) contents of a media library rather than the contents of the remote optical drive. Thank you for clearing that up.

A couple of questions…

1. Given the problems you are experiencing, is there any particular reason why you don’t actually use a library of audio media ripped remotely by your remote colleagues (or even ripped locally then transferred)?

2) As it doesn’t appear possible to script a dump of various RDS settings for both local and remote sessions, are you happy to continue with a yes/no format to subsequent questions?

Hope this helps…

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OK, it sounds like what you are saying is your screenshot in post #6 is of the (partial) contents of a media library rather than the contents of the remote optical drive. Thank you for clearing that up.

Yes. In fact I tried to eliminate those tracks when I make that screenshot by clicking on something else in the left column – Videos or something, I don’t remember – but when I then clicked on the CD drive the Library tracks re-appeared. I guess WMP needs to display something and if the drive is empty it defaults to the music library.

1. Given the problems you are experiencing, is there any particular reason why you don’t actually use a library of audio media ripped remotely by your remote colleagues (or even ripped locally then transferred)?

Colleagues implies that they are at a similar level of skill and knowledge to me. In our situation we have three employees. One is banned from using the computers except for certain activities such as ringing up a sale. She has earned this distinction. The second is very sharp, but can’t remember things anymore and is very nervous about messing with applications other than the Point of Sale system and email. Please understand, these ladies are very good at what they do, and what they do is to interact with people, not computers. The third is quite a bit younger and fairly new so we are just learning her capabilities. I have, in fact, taught her how to rip a CD, but she is only there four days a week, and the boss doesn’t want to wait that long to try out a new CD.

Ripped locally and then transferred would be time-consuming and expensive. We’d have to have a CD mailed to us, rip it, and mail it back, and the transfers will bog down our VPN because the connection in the store is a pretty slow DSL line. Waiting for that third employee to come in would be quicker. At at our margins we would have to sell quite a few CDs to pay for the mailing costs.

I should also add, for those who might worry about me ripping music and playing it in a store: We are not playing it as “free muzak”, we actually sell music CDs. Yes, it’s old-fashioned, but we still do. We rip only CDs that we sell and we play only those that we have in stock and which are selling well. We do not sell copies, we sell only new CDs legally purchased. We just need the tracks on our “jukebox” computer so we can demo them. That’s why the boss and buyer manages that system. When a new CD arrives, she wants to get some tracks on the playlist as soon as possible. And our suppliers are happy with the arrangement because we sell more of their CDs and they don’t have to keep us in music demo systems. We used to have 16 of those demo stations in the store, but we’re just down to a couple because the music companies keep consolidating or going out of business.

2) As it doesn’t appear possible to script a dump of various RDS settings for both local and remote sessions, are you happy to continue with a yes/no format to subsequent questions?

Yes.

Though I admit that I’m close to giving up. I might just have to keep that Vista system around for ripping CDs. Pretty pathetic when an old beater like that can do the job but modern versions won’t.

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As a matter of interest, have you considered using a different remote access tool? I know a lot of people might suggest TeamViewer but the license costs for business use are high. As an alternative, could you try something like UltraVNC on the remote box? That would show immediately whether it’s an RDS issue or not.

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As a matter of interest, have you considered using a different remote access tool? I know a lot of people might suggest TeamViewer but the license costs for business use are high. As an alternative, could you try something like UltraVNC on the remote box? That would show immediately whether it’s an RDS issue or not.

While we do sell enough music to make it worth our while, the margins are not high enough to justify an expensive solution for our level of use. I did also try a different VNC based application some years ago while trying to cope with a different problem and the experience was considerably less than acceptable when compared to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop. There was also the hassle of having to keep servers and clients up-to-date. We log in to all 6 systems in our store every day, so the maintenance was quite a hassle. Time has passed and maybe they have improved to the point where it is worth looking at again. Maybe Secunia will keep them up-to-date for me.

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I did also try a different VNC based application some years ago while trying to cope with a different problem and the experience was considerably less than acceptable when compared to Microsoft’s Remote Desktop. There was also the hassle of having to keep servers and clients up-to-date. We log in to all 6 systems in our store every day, so the maintenance was quite a hassle.

With RDP you log onto the remote session as a new (remote) user with your own logon rights. With VNC-based solutions you are piggy-backing onto the already-logged on user’s session at the remote end, using their logon rights.

However, I don’t think you need to consider this yet because I think my post #24 will work.

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I think you may actually have two separate problems – one is ‘media info display’ and the other is ‘remote control’.

1. Your VPN. When you are using it, Windows Media Player is unable to retrieve the additional information from the Internet (Gracenote). When the VPN isn’t active then colleagues in the remote store don’t have any problems because Windows Media Player CAN retrieve the information. Have a read of this article which explains more. (I know it’s about cars but I think it still applies.)

As a test, I disconnected my Windows 10 laptop from the Internet and put the same audio CD I’ve been using in. Windows Media Player correctly identified both the CD and track names. I ejected it and put another audio CD in… and it showed in Windows Media Player as Unknown artist and track numbers instead of track names. I think this shows that WMP caches the information from Gracenote. As a further test I reconnected to the Internet, ejected the ‘Unknown’ audio CD then put it back in again. Within seconds the audio CD was correctly identified.

I think this confirms why audio CD’s show as ‘Unknown’ to you remotely… ‘cos WMP can’t get to Gracenote whilst you’re logged in remotely via RDP tunnelled through VPN.

2. I think a local security policy on the remote PC may have disabled your remote access to the CD player, thus disallowing your control of it. To check, do the following:

[INDENT]a. RDP to the box and login as an Administrator.
b. Click on the Start orb, type gpedit.msc into the Search programs and files input box then press Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.
c. When the Local Group Policy Editor opens, click to expand Administrative Templates under Computer Configuration.
d. Click to expand System.
e. Scroll down the list and click on Removable Storage Access.
f. In the right-hand pane, double-click on the All Removable Storage: Allow direct access in remote sessions setting.
g. When the dialog opens, click on the Enabled option. (Note that the Help shows the default, i.e. Not Configured, is to disallow access from a remote session. I’m hoping this is the cause of your issue with not being able to control CD’s from WMP.)
h. Click OK to save the settings.
i. Close the Local Group Policy Editor window when you are done.[/INDENT]

Try Windows Media Player again. If this doesn’t work, do the following:

[INDENT]a. Open the Local Security Policy console by selecting Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools then select Local Security Policy.

b. Expand the Local Policies section and select Security Options.

c. Check that Devices: Restrict CD-ROM access to locally logged-on user only has not been configured.[/INDENT]

If it has been configured, change it back to Not Defined. Unfortunately you have to reboot the PC for the policy change to take effect.

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I think you may actually have two separate problems – one is ‘media info display’ and the other is ‘remote control’.

1. Your VPN. When you are using it, Windows Media Player is unable to retrieve the additional information from the Internet (Gracenote). When the VPN isn’t active then colleagues in the remote store don’t have any problems because Windows Media Player CAN retrieve the information. Have a read of this article which explains more. (I know it’s about cars but I think it still applies.)

This implies that I simply cannot see the names of the album and tracks. I could actually deal with renaming the album and tracks if I could just play the CD. Not only does WNP not display those names, it does not play the CD at all. Does it really have to know the name of the album and tracks before it will play them? What if I put one of my own home-made CDs (I play mandolin) into the drive and try to play it?

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This implies that I simply cannot see the names of the album and tracks. I could actually deal with renaming the album and tracks if I could just play the CD. Not only does WNP not display those names, it does not play the CD at all. Does it really have to know the name of the album and tracks before it will play them?

I haven’t explained it very well in post #24. It’s not you who can’t see the names of the album and tracks, it’s Windows Media Player that cannot connect to Gracenote in the background to retrieve the data because a VPN is in use for your RDP session, i.e. problem 1. You don’t need to rename the album and tracks. It’s not WMP that can’t play the CD… it’s you that can’t play it because currently your RDP session does not currently have the rights to control WMP remotely.

Doing this a step at a time, just do the following:

[INDENT]a. RDP to the box and login as an Administrator.
b. Click on the Start orb, type gpedit.msc into the Search programs and files input box then press Enter to open the Local Group Policy Editor.
c. When the Local Group Policy Editor opens, click to expand Administrative Templates under Computer Configuration.
d. Click to expand System.
e. Scroll down the list and click on Removable Storage Access.
f. In the right-hand pane, double-click on the All Removable Storage: Allow direct access in remote sessions setting.
g. When the dialog opens, click on the Enabled option. (Note that the Help shows the default, i.e. Not Configured, is to disallow access from a remote session. I’m hoping this is the cause of your issue with not being able to control CD’s from WMP.)
h. Click OK to save the settings.
i. Close the Local Group Policy Editor window when you are done.[/INDENT]

Try Windows Media Player again… you should now be able to control WMP (Play, etc.) from the RDP session.

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Hang on for just a minute, Rick. I’m trying to digest all of the last few posts…

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Sorry, I had to run off and thought I had posted this, but apparently not:

I think you may actually have two separate problems – one is ‘media info display’ and the other is ‘remote control’.

I think this confirms why audio CD’s show as ‘Unknown’ to you remotely… ‘cos WMP can’t get to Gracenote whilst you’re logged in remotely via RDP tunnelled through VPN.

I forgot to address this part.

I do not connect to the computer via VPN. I simplified that part just because this whole thing is so complex, anyway. We have a ZyXel USG class router in the store. The LAN side of that router is 192.168.1.X subnet. We have a ZyXel USG class router in our office. The LAN side of that router is 192.168.2.X. The two routers connect with a VPN, but none of the computers on either end know about it. For all they know, there is just one router with two subnets off of it.

It could be, though, that WMP doesn’t even like a remote connection from a different subnet. So I logged on to one of the systems in the store and the used RDP to connect it to another computer on the same subnet. The result is unchanged: Unknown CD and it won’t play.

2. I think a local security policy on the remote PC may have disabled your remote access to the CD player, thus disallowing your control of it.

(I need to run off to an appointment right now, but I’ll probably go on with Part 2 later this afternoon.)

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Well that was a really long minute.

Yay, Rick! I just tried your recommendation from post #28 and it works! Thank you very much. Your profile says you are in the UK. Too bad you’re so far away ’cause I owe you a lunch.

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Excellent! I’m really pleased for you.

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