Some Commercial DVD movies not recognized in computer

[bg55]

Drive will not recognize a couple of Commercial DVD's I bought. This has happened with three so far.
The DVD's are playable in my living room DVD player, but my computer does not recognize them. The computer DVD drive does recognize and play other commercial DVDs just fine, just not these.
When I go into explorer, the drive shows as empty. When first inserting the DVDs the drive does try to read them. They just do not show up as being in the drive at all.
Even if I have DVDfab open, the computer still will not recognize the movie. Nor does DVDfab see it.
I am out of things to try. It is confusing that they work just fine in a stand alone DVD player but in the computer DVD drive they are not recognized. I am thinking it is a copy protection issue on certain movies.
I did a search on the web, a few forums, and have not come up with a solution. Others have had a similar problem but the fix was something I already covered.
I am running Vista SP2 and have the latest version of DVDfab installed.
Any help would be appreciated.

[redwudz]

Some DVD drives are better than others at reading discs, though commercial discs shouldn't be a problem with any of them. What brand and model of DVD drive are you using? Anything different about the discs, like they are from Sony or one of the other companies that uses the latest versions of ARccOS or similar copy protection?

I should warn you also that trying to read a 'unreadable' DVD disc several times in a row may result in the OS reverting the drive to PIO operation and greatly slowing disc access, along with greatly increasing the CPU usage during reads. Something to watch out for.

[lordsmurf]

Which commercials DVDs? Bought where?

[bg55]

The DVD drive is a (Atapi DVD W DH16W1P ATA), it came with my Gateway DX430X computer.
The two movies that I am currently trying to back up are The Taking of Pelham 123 (SonyPictures video) and Night At The Museum 2 (Twentieth Century Fox Film).
Bought them both from the local Blockbuster store.

[redwudz]

I would check them for scratches if they are used discs. Copying requires a 100% error free disc, while playback may not be as picky. But it may just be a problem with your particular drive. Try a different PC drive. The Sony disc likely does have ARccOS. Not sure about what 20th Century uses.

[Putana]

I had this problem with Lionsgate's W. (the George Bush bio pic)...it was the ONLY disc I had that problem with...DVD drive was still "blank", despite a scratchless disc being in it. Didn't have that problem with Night at the Museum 2 though.