Having a few issus with my CD-ROM drives. Ideas?

Published on March 27, 2005 By kona0197 In PC Hardware

Anyone ever had a DVD-ROM refuse to recognize or play an DVD? My DVD-ROM is old and probably the lens is dirty but it will recognize any other data or CD audio disk but not an DVD movie disc - and this is on a fresh install of XP with every update except SP2 and I am using cyberlink PowerDVD 6... and the movie is brand new.

Also something is wrong with my CDRW drive as well - it seems it dosen't like to write to CDs correctly. Out of 20 I got 6 to write good. HMM. I'm using Nero 5.5 and writeing at 4x.

I'm using a rounded IDE cable. My motherboard is a Shuttle mobo using the Nvidia Nforce2 chipset. Ecvery driver is up to date. I am using the Nvidia IDE driver instead of the default MS IDE driver. Could that cause problems?

The cable is setup that the DVD-ROM is master, CDRW drive is slave.

Comments (Page 2)

kona0197

on Mar 28, 2005

*Sigh*

Ok Yrag I did EVERYTHING you suggested and did it to the T yet i can't get my DVD-ROM to even recognize any DVD movie disc. It will easyly recognize data, music and CD-RW discs but not my not DVDs. I am wondering if XP is to blame here.

What should I do?

yrag

on Mar 28, 2005

hummm.....no, I can't think of any reason that XP would cause the problem. I'm not so sure there isn't a conflict between Nero and Power DVD. You could try and see if the DVD plays using MS Media Player. (it can use either the PWRDVD or Nero decoder). Failing that, if your cables are 80 pin and the drives are set correctly (neither can be CS...only Master or Slave) and you can read data on each CD Rom then my guess is that the DVD player is the culprit. The CD-RW would not operate correctly earlier because of being slaved to a malfunctioning DVD drive. If you tried the CD-RW read/write abilities with it hooked up by itself as I noted above and it worked correctly...then I believe your DVD is due for retirement. The only way to know for sure is to try it on another computer with a decoder installed and see if it works. I would bet even money, it doesn't work on another system either....

kona0197

on Mar 28, 2005

Well as a last ditch effort I'm going to try cleaning the lens. If it still will not work I believe new DVD-ROMs are cheap these days. Thanks for your help.

Jafo

on Mar 28, 2005

Are we talking original DVDs or re-recorded ones...if the latter perhaps it's a format issue....eg DVD+R vs DVD-R...

Double Zero

on Mar 28, 2005

Far be it for me to "jump" in on another thread, I have been follwing this one and wanted to share..

Kona, I recently experienced a similar issue with my DVD burner and it isnt that old..its a TDK Indi 880n, pretty decent as far as burners go..it will not play the newer *Double Data rate DVD's* it will play all the older DVD's, before they changed the format of them.
I have updated the firmware, AND the software, I have Emailed both the DVD manufacturer and the Software Manufacturer..they have no answers..
I can still burn DVD's and like I said it will read the older DVD's..just not the Double Data Rate DVD's..
I dont know if you may be experiencing the same issue, but the fact that it will read other formats suggests that it may be related to the same problem..
If it is and you find a solution I would be more than grateful if you would share it.

Thanks,
Zero.

kona0197

on Mar 28, 2005

Jafo - I'm talking about original DVDs such as "Full Metal Jacket"

Zero - If I find a solution I'll let you know.

The drive was made on 10/2000 so it's 5 years old. I think it's time to get a new one.

MadDeez

on Mar 28, 2005

kona, i bet if you install SP2, things will be fine. wink, wink

sorry, i had to say it

PurrBall

on Mar 28, 2005

I had a similar problem, except Windoze stopped detecting all drives except the HD. A few hours later, whenever I boot it just restarts. Was on phone with Gateway and my HD died after a test. Now up and running with new HD.

Everything works fine. Try putting your drive in another computer and that should tell us the problem..

kona0197

on Mar 28, 2005

Snidely: It has nothing to do with SP2 as it was playing movies just FINE before SP1 and even after SP1. It's a old drive. Either it's just old or dirty. (Nice try)

Meowy: I have no other computer to put it in. My hard drive is fairly new and tests out just fine. XP detects all my drives as it should. After all it's not a matter of XP detecting my drive but rather why the DVD-ROM will read any disc I put in it and recognize every disc I put in it BUT a DVD Movie.

mrtee

on Mar 28, 2005

Look in event viewer, are you getting "bad block" errors on the drive?

There are 2 LASERs in the drive the LASER for DVD might be bad. Had the same problem with an HP combo writer, they replaced it. Then the replacement did the same thing, of course the warrenty was expired then.

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kona0197

on Mar 28, 2005

I looked in the event viewer and yes I'm getting alot of "bad block" errors.

ActionJay

on Mar 28, 2005

hi guys, pouncing the thread here since I've been fighting with my DVD drive recently as well. It's a fairly old, cheap drive, and I won't rule out that it's simply worn out... but the whole thing is pretty much exactly as Kona's been describing. I also have rounded IDE cables, whether that makes a difference, and my CD-RW is on the same chain. They're set to cable select, and the CD-RW gets master while the DVD takes slave.

There is definitely no driver issue here. My drive won't read CDs or DVDs in Windows XP or Linux, and I can't boot from the drive using a bootable DVD.Sometiems the drive isn't even detected in Linux, either. In XP, when it does try reading a disc, it starts to drag down the system while it spins and spins. I've tried a cleaning disc but to no avail. This has happened to me a few times before, and resolves itself seemingly at random. Bad connections maybe? Dust in the circuits? As an IT guy myself, I hate having to attribute this sorta thing to gremlins

kona0197

on Mar 30, 2005

After cleaning the DVD_ROM several times with a CD-ROM cleaning kit the drive still refuses to play DVD movies. So I'm going to get a new drive. I think the DVD laser went out because the drive still reads everything else.

After cleaning the CD-RW writes CD's just fine.

PurrBall

on Mar 30, 2005

You could bring it over to someone else's comp.

kona0197

on Mar 30, 2005

I'm not going to tear apart my machine just to test a DVD-ROM in someone else's machine. I'll simply replace the drive.

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