I do computer work for an office that just purchased a new Acer computer. Everything was fine, until one day they could no longer access the optical drive. When they try, they get the message "Administrator has prohibited access to CD/DVD Rom drives" "Restriction Warning". There have never been any administrative rules applied to the computer. But suddenly this is there. If you connect an external drive, you get the same message saying that access to USB/1394 mass storage devices has been prohibited. I have tried everything I can think of to get rid of the restrictions.... but so far no luck. Any ideas?? Doug

Probably a GPO was applied. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555324

Funnily enough I've got the same problem, also on an ACER. I'm using XP Pro. I've logged on as administrator, edited local security to disable restrictions on the CD drive,but no joy. Is this something peculiar to ACER. I don't remember having hte problem when the PC was new. Dave

Doug I finally tracked down my identical problem. ACER LANSCOPE. I deleted the programme from my PC and everything works AOK. It boots quicker and runs faster. I couldn't find any instructions for LANScope so the only thing to do was to delete it using Add/Remove programmes in Control Panel. Hope it solves your problem also Good luck Dave

I have had the identical problem withan Acer Power desktop. Worked yesterday now both optical drives show the no entry symbol and the Administrator restricted access to drives message when booting up. Have removed Lanscope as the last post. This has returned access to the optical drives but they have lost the 'standard' CD icon and show an undefined file icon. At least I can use the drives now. Thanks, Ian.

I too have a simular problem and built my PC myself - Intel motherboard & CPU with Win Xp Pro SP3, what I found... My Intel motherboard came with a Driver/software CD - Using it may have been my first mistake When I installed some of the driver/software mainly for audio, the installation CD gives you some options to install, but... some software is install automattically without the option not to install it and this is where I found where the problem is coming from. In fact, it is a pain just to try and uninstall it. The (2) software that was automattically install with drivers is; (1) Intel Desktop Utilities - Nice tool, runs in background and monitors system temperatures, However, I had a tower with poor airflow and when playing Oblivion (elder scrolls), the tower got hot and triggered a over temp alarm which would auto switch out of game to IDU and lock-up the game (Force end program). I got a better tower and increased over-temp threshold five degrees, problem fixed (2) AdminWorls 1.2 - The software allows remote access to and from other PCs if on network or online. (I never used) But when I started getting those red cicles with the slash (No access) on floppy drive, optical drives & removable drives, I also upon shutdown had to manually end program to awserv.exe a few times. I did some poking around Intel's directories and found those red circles again by AdminWorks installer and they were; FloppyDriveLocked.ico OpticalDriveLocked.ico RemovableDriveLocked.ico So I TRIED to navigate through Intel's online support, arg, the worst ever seen, one wrong turn and start all over, there wasn't any option to backup one or two pages,I even did a search on Intel's world wide support for IDU - Nothing. I found somebody hadstated onlinethey re-installed IDU and the problem went away. I tried to un-install IDU within Add/remove programs and got error message, so I went into Task Manager and ended the AdminWorks string (awserver.exe and/or awtray.exe). Then I tried again to un-install IDU and got error message again. This time I put into the restricted drive the installation CD for Intel's drivers/software and only select one item to install (audio driver) and that was the trigger to un-install IDU and it's AdminWorks software...HUH? Sure enough, I looked for the folders were the programs were and they are now gone, but the red circles are still there. Hmmm, well, I tired now, I will try to re-install IDU later and see if the problem goes away.