Another "My DVD drive isn't reading DVDs" thread

[Mr Wibble]

I don't seem to have much luck with DVD drives. About 6 months ago my old one decided to stop reading DVDs and after trying to fix it I just gave up and bought a new one. About 4 months after I bought the new one, it also decided to stop reading DVDs (both still read CDs happily).
I'm pretty sure it's not the OS, as I have the problem in both win98 and win2000. I've had both drives conneted as secondary IDE slave and as secondary master on my RAID card. I even got around to updating the firmware, but to no avail.
Any suggestions?

[NooNoo]

Welcome to Windrivers Mr Wibble.

They should not be on the raid card, they should be on the secondary ide of the onboard motherboard ide ports.

[Mr Wibble]

How so?
I had the old one on the raid card for 18 months or so and it was fine. I did try putting the current one back onboard IDE, but it didn't make any difference.

[NooNoo]

Optical drives are not raid capable devices.

Can you read a data dvd with explorer? Or do you mean autoplay doesn't work?

download this dvd player Does it see the dvd in the drive?

[confus-ed]

How so?
I had the old one on the raid card for 18 months or so and it was fine..

Err I think Noo's getting confus-ed now ! or at least causing confu-ed-ness !

Most 'raid' cards can just work like additional ide controllers when not 'raided' - she's on about when you might have hard drives in a RAID on it already (various different cards all have differing capabalities, some can mirror or stripe on one channel & be 'additional ide' on the other, or all need to be raided etc etc - for clarities sake I'd suggest if you have a 'standard ide port' free on the motherboard we use that for now).

Can we know here please what the current DVD playing s/w is ?

The question she asks about being able to read a data DVD & at least see the DVDs data is very important, this identifies whether the player s/w & codecs are there or not or whether the device is faulty or its setup somehow wrong.

[Mr Wibble]

Err I think Noo's getting confus-ed now ! or at least causing confu-ed-ness !

Most 'raid' cards can just work like additional ide controllers when not 'raided' - she's on about when you might have hard drives in a RAID on it already (various different cards all have differing capabalities, some can mirror or stripe on one channel & be 'additional ide' on the other, or all need to be raided etc etc - for clarities sake I'd suggest if you have a 'standard ide port' free on the motherboard we use that for now).

Already done

Can we know here please what the current DVD playing s/w is ?

The question she asks about being able to read a data DVD & at least see the DVDs data is very important, this identifies whether the player s/w & codecs are there or not or whether the device is faulty or its setup somehow wrong.

Well, it's not recognising any DVDs in the drive, data or film (powerDVD is installed on both win98 and win2000 (dual boot machine)).

[confus-ed]

Is it possible to test these units 'elsewhere' ? (i.e on a beastie that definately can play DVD) - there seems to be a rash of '1/2 working drives' swamping the marketplace currently ! (knowing the model numbers of the units 'in question' may be helpful too, some use one laser, others use two {this is more prevalent with 'cheapie' ones} - so its possible to have the cd bit still ok, but not the DVD bit - the unit is effectively 'busted' !!)

[Mr Wibble]

Is it possible to test these units 'elsewhere' ? (i.e on a beastie that definately can play DVD) - there seems to be a rash of '1/2 working drives' swamping the marketplace currently ! (knowing the model numbers of the units 'in question' may be helpful too, some use one laser, others use two {this is more prevalent with 'cheapie' ones} - so its possible to have the cd bit still ok, but not the DVD bit - the unit is effectively 'busted' !!)

The old one was a 16x Mercury drive (don't have the model number to hand) and the new one is a BTC 5216 combo. I was intending to buy parts for my new machine at the end of the month and that was one of the first things I was going to try, though I doubt I'll be able to try them in a different machine before then

[Platypus]

The DVD laser failure rate is fairly high unfortunately. The classic symptom for dual-wavelength lasers is reading CDs OK, no read DVDs.

If it can't read data DVDs, and doesn't respond to a lens clean, that looks to be the likely cause.

[confus-ed]

The DVD laser failure rate is fairly high unfortunately. The classic symptom for dual-wavelength lasers is reading CDs OK, no read DVDs.

If it can't read data DVDs, and doesn't respond to a lens clean, that looks to be the likely cause.

That's the one sadly .. The BTC appears to be dual laser (or thats what google is telling me), if its possible to rma it, (you said purchased 6 months or so ago - generally you get a year) get on the case & 'return to sender' ! - I think thats all the help we can be ..