DVD Drive...

U

u.k.man

New Member
Hi guys, My new DVD Re-writer drive works fine in my new PC for reading and playing discs etc, however my new DVD drive seems to read partially and then it doesn't read at all at times.Do you think it the lens need cleaning? Or do you reckon it's busted. As its new I wouldn't of thought it would be anything that I have just mentioned but there you go. What do you think?
 
A new drive will not have a dirty lens. Are the disks you are playing home-recorded or commercial/rentals? Home-recorded may be more difficult to read. What do you mean by partially reading?

It doesn't sound very promising.

Starman*
 
I'll put in say a blank disc that I have put a file or folder on and it'll come up on show but when I double click to open it,it'll freeze then says something about read memory or something like that. I'll put in a music disc and it won't play at all. yet in my DVD Rewriter drive everything works fine.
 
U.k.man, it's still not clear what sort of disks you are playing. The blank disk with added file is clearly self-made. Are the music disks ones that you recorded eg stuck a bunch of mp3's on a blank disk?

The problem with using your self-made disks is that if the disk was poorly recorded (due to a fault in the burning process) then it may read poorly. What I am saying is that it could be a recording problem rather than a playing problem. Commercial/rental disks eg store-bought CD or Blockbuster rental are made by a much better process and you should test the reading capability of the bad drive using one of those, not your own disks.

Some drives work better than others with marginal recordings so if your other drive can read self-made disks, it does not mean much. If you recorded the test disks on that other drive, it's a fact that recorders often work better with disks they recorded themselves.

Starman*
 
OK, good. Much better idea where we stand. The only thing I can suggest is that you look in Control Panel / System / Hardware / Device manager. Go to the IDE controllers, find the channel the drive is on, right-click, Properties / Advanced Settings, check dma is enabled and current transfer mode should be udma 2 or 4. With two drives you should have two devices showing that.

Starman*
 
Hi, my Primary IDE channel says ultra dma mode 5
Secondary IDE channel is ultra dma mode 2
SIS PCI IDE controller.....
that's what I found in IDE controllers.. hope this helps.
PS tried another disc in DVD drive and it sounds like it wants to read and play the disc and the folder comes up within disc but when I double click to open it up a long pause is followed by 'not a valid win32 application'
U.K.MAN
 
According to my maths you have at least 1 hdd and 2 dvd drives. You only listed 2 udma modes. Each IDE channel is two devices. The two you listed are the hdd and one dvd drive. The other?

What software are you trying to play the disks with? I assumed to date you were talking about Explorer but I may be wrong.

Starman*
 
Hi,the Secondary IDE has two devices(the DVD and DVD Re-writer drives)hence the Ultra DMA Mode 2. And yes it is Explorer I am using. thanks
U.K.MAN
 
Your setup looks OK. You could get the Nero CD/DVD Speed, Info, and DriveSpeed tools at CD Speed and see if running any of the tests reveals anything. You could check the manufacturer's site for latest drivers but many use the default Windows drivers. As you have nothing to lose you could also install any firmware updates.

You could temporarily install in another pc if you have access to one to make sure it's the drive and not the pc setup.

Starman*
 
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