How to resolve "Windows - no disk" errors when launching Media Center 2005 on an HP machine

I have heard from a few folks (mostly via comments on this blog post) regarding an issue with HP Media Center 2005 machines. On some HP machines, customers are seeing an error message pop up when launching Media Center. This error message has the following information:

  • Title: Windows - No Disk
  • Text: There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive
  • Buttons: Cancel, Try Again and Continue

This error does not prevent Media Center from launching, but sits on the desktop until you exit Media Center.

We were able to track this issue down to some kind of bug in the HP Image Zone for Media Center application that is pre-installed on HP Media Center systems that appears if you uninstal the Norton Anti-virus and/or System Security suite that also comes pre-installed on HP Media Center systems. We reported this issue to HP and also some customers have reported it, and they have issued an update to Image Zone that addresses this issue.

A customer was kind enough to post the response he received from HP about this issue. According to the HP support team, you can find this update for Image Zone at this location, and that should allow you to resolve this No Disk error without needing to reinstall Norton or uninstall Image Zone (which are the possible workarounds suggested in the past).

<update date="11/30/2005"> HP contacted me today with a new location for the fix, so I have updated the link in the text of this blog post </update>

<update date="4/9/2006"> The previous link I had posted seemed to be unreliable for some people because it was pointed to the HP FTP server, so I have updated it to a better link location. HP also appears to have updated the package since I originally posted this as well to provide some additional fixes. </update>