I discovered earlier this week that Windows 7 has another annoying holdover from Windows Vista. It turns out that if you have CD or DVD burner, Windows will conveniently eject the tray for you if you double-click the drive from Windows Explorer (or single click it from the file save/open dialog).

That’s a great idea EXCEPT when you have a case like this one. (Mine’s an older Sonata but the same situation applies.) Let’s think about it: Ejecting the tray when there’s a lid outside the drive that operates to keep it closed. Thank goodness I didn’t damage anything.

Thankfully, there’s a solution. It’s not a great solution. They don’t have an obvious “uncheck this to prevent Windows from stupidly ejecting your drive during accidental clicks.” Instead, you have to disable and remove burning features from Windows explorer using the group policy editor (gpedit.msc).

TLDR version/I don’t like clicking links:

To disable ejecting your CD tray after an accidental click, enter gpedit.msc into the run menu or the start menu’s search bar and then browse to: User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> and click on Windows Explorer. From here, set Remove CD Burning Features to Enabled.

Nearly every geek with a blog offered up a hasty review of Windows 7 when the beta first went public earlier this year. The exact same pattern repeated itself some months later when, on May 5, the release candidate was made available to the general public. Seriously, do a Google search for “windows 7 review” (or click the link if you’re lazy). It’s absurd. Yet a majority of these results are focused on the authors’ first impressions with Windows 7. What about using it for a few months? Read more…