Windows 7 PCs May Freeze When a Blu-ray Disc Is Inserted

Customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client on a computer equipped with a Blu-ray drive might find that in certain situations they won’t be able to continue working on the PC after they insert a recordable BD-R. According to Microsoft, Windows Server 2008 R2 users reported similar problems. The Redmond company already has a hotfix available which the company offers to affected customers. It is important to note that the fix doesn’t need to be deployed by all Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 users, but only by those affected by this specific issue. Users will have to contact Microsoft Support directly in order to get the hotfix.

“You have a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. Windows Explorer may stop responding when you insert a recordable Blu-ray disc (BD-R) into the Blu-ray drive on this computer,” the software giant explained. “This problem may occur after you install the universal drive format (UDF) file system driver (Udfs.sys) update.”

In the first half of December 2009, Microsoft released an update for the Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system driver (Udfs.sys) for Windows 7 and for Windows Server 2008 R2. The refresh in question was designed to resolve a variety of issues related to Windows 7’s Udfs.sys. Apparently, while it indeed dealt with the problems associated with Udfs.sys, the update also managed to introduce new problems, causing Windows 7 computers to freeze when a recordable Blu-ray Disc is inserted in the BD-R drive.

Microsoft underlined that Udfs.sys update fixed the “following issues: You try to back up some large files to a DVD-RW by using Windows Backup in Windows 7 or in Windows Server 2008 R2 -the backup operation fails. You format a DVD+/-RW in the "Like a USB flash drive" format, and then you write some files to the DVD+/-RW - After you eject and then reinsert this DVD+/-RW into the DVD+/-RW drive, you cannot write a file to the DVD+/-RW. You format a DVD+/-R in the "Like a USB flash drive" format - when you try to write files to the DVD+/-R, the writing speed is very slow.”