Creative tech support = horrid.

Unfortunately, they provided no help to me. All of my independent troubleshooting was useless.

Here's the deal,

Windows 98 (and redhat 7.3 for that matter)
acer 8x4x32 cdrw (slave, I believe)
Creative PC-DVD 8x (primary, problem drive)

The drive, when I first purchased this computer, worked flawlessly. I don't have a decoder card installed, nor did I ever. On my third or fourth reformat the drive ceased to play DVDs properly. It does however play CD,CDR,CDRWs without hesitation.

Thus far, I have tried:

- installing PowerDVD
- installing new drivers, which failed because creative.com has no drivers for the 8x dvd player. Only drivers for the hardware decoder card.
- using different DVDs in the drive
- finding the original disc that came with the drive, that I lost.
- twiddling my thumbs

Whenever I attempt to play a DVD, it seems as if it is about to start to play, then halts.

I can not view DVD's in windows explorer. Though I can view other media on that drive in windows explorer.

All I can think of now is that it's a hardware problem with the drive.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.