Event 7026: The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load: cdrom

On a newly installed Windows 2008 server (HP DL360G6), I found the following error in my event log:

Log Name:      System
Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          30-7-2010 8:52:42
Event ID:      7026
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      servername
Description:
The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
cdrom

As the server does not have a cdrom drive, this is an somewhat expected error (although I don’t understand why Windows wants to start the cdrom service since the server has never had a cdrom drive connected 🙂 ).

Anyways, to prevent this error from appearing in your event viewer, you should disable the cdrom service. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type “regedit” and click OK
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\cdrom\
3. Double-click “Start” and change the value from 1 to 4
4. Click OK and reboot the computer. The service cdrom will now not start at startup