dvd player wont play help!!

[skaboogal]

hi there im very new to this forum stuff so Ill do what i can to make this as easy as possible! I have a problem with my DVD reader drive. a couple of weeks ago it suddenly stopped reading disks! I checked in the device manager folder and it is there and says its working normally but it will not read dvds and cd's i also have a cd writer so I swapped the drives but the cd drive works in the dvds place. That led me to completly reinstall everything but still no luck please help!!

Kind regards

phill

[slgrieb]

Device Manager's reports about the state of your hardware are often unreliable. Your DVD drive is bad. The software issues that would keep the drive from working would almost certainly prevent the CD form reading as well. Hopefully, the drive is still under warranty (normally one year).

[skaboogal]

my worst fear realised looks like ill have to buy a new one! so theres no way to save it? everything works it just cant read the disks!

[Mad Machinist]

Occasionally updating the firmware will resurect one from the dead as will a CD Drive laser cleaning disk....but don't hold your breath....you might turn blue

[slgrieb]

Uh, really have no clue what the old drive might be used for other than a paperweight. Gee, this could be a topic for a thread of its own!

Seriously, if you do have to replace the drive, and you haven't done so yet, I'd buy a DVD Dual Layer burner instead of a DVD-ROM drive. You can buy one for $45-$50, and they can write to CD-R, RW, DVD+,-R, +,-RW, and Dual Layer media. Dual layer blanks still cost way too much, but that will change quickly. MIght as well be ready.

LightScribe drives which let you burn a label on your disk just don't seem that attractive to me. Too slow, greyscale only, special media; just gimme a Sharpie.

As far as specific drives, check out: http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=2470&p=2