Entire Lab won't play music CDs after snow leopard upgrade.

I'm new to the forums, so if this is in the wrong place I apologize.

I'm a lab assistant in the only all Mac lab in our university. Over the Christmas holiday we upgraded all our machines (about 80) to Snow Leopard.

Although we tested most things before we upgraded, we have wound up with a problem that I can't seem to find any info on.

When a music (or any audio) CD is put into the computers its comes up with an error saying that the computer cannot read the disk. This is true for burned CDs as well as retail CDs. DVDs have no problems.

Because it is a problem with every computer in our lab it is unlikely that its a hardware issue.

I've googled around trying to find someone else with the same issue, but haven't been able to find anything so far.

If you have any ideas let me know, thanks.

The media player selected as default for playing CDs is apparently not compatible with Snow Leopard. Go to /System Preferences/CDs & DVDs/and see what is selected as the application to open when a music CD is inserted. Then, you will either have to update that player, or select another one. I recommend that you download and select VLC as the player.

PS: The default player in Snow Leopard is set to iTunes. You may not have that available in a Lab setting. In that case you would need to install/select another player.

Currently iTunes is the default player when a music CD is inserted. I'll try getting VLC and making it the default.

Thanks

Have you made sure that when you upgraded the OS that you also have the newest version of Itunes ?

Clay

If itunes is selected as the default, you shouldn't have a problem playing CD's.... 80 machines esp.... something has gone a miss here. 1 machine I would suggest some trouble shooting, but 80, there has definitely been a problem with the installation process.
Open itunes, and then load a CD.... Is it showing up after a short while in the left column?
What updates have you installed since installing snow leopard?

Thanks for the replies

We do have the current version of iTunes (9.0.2)

If iTunes is open when the CD is inserted nothing happens except for the same error message that pops up when iTunes is not open: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."

Since installing snow leopard we have regularly run the apple software update, but that is all.

Did VLC work?
It's got me baffled as you say it's 80 macs.
Just try this in one of the machines.
Mac OS X v10.6.2 Update (Combo)

It sounds like a superdrive issue, but I can't believe the same problem can happen to 80 macs simultaneously.

Failing the combo update (which fixes many unexplained behaviors), I would be ringing apple.

Solved!

Thanks for all the input.

It turned out to be corrupted permissions files. Now I'm working on a new problem

hobblyjig said:

Thanks for all the input.

It turned out to be corrupted permissions files. Now I'm working on a new problem

Click to expand...

80 of them ?!

I second that clayneal... 80 of them?

Heh

Ya all 80. One computer was upgraded and then the whole lab was imaged. Somehow the original machine got corrupted before the image went out. Not sure how that happened.

I had a feeling .....

hobblyjig said:

Ya all 80. One computer was upgraded and then the whole lab was imaged. Somehow the original machine got corrupted before the image went out. Not sure how that happened.

Click to expand...

Imaged? Yikes. I haven't seen this problem since my schools IT started imaging Windows XP SP3 to upgrade 5 year old Dells and 3 year old HP's. The problems they experienced was driver-related. That's about all I know there.

But wow. 80 Macs in ONE lab?

Yes, I'd say I had a feeling as well...