DVDs wont play on my labtop

[blackoutmusic]

I have a Dell Inspiron labtop that I recently purchased some DVDs for. The labtop has a built in DVD player, and when I tried playing the DVDs, only one of the 7 I purchased worked. The DVDs were purchased used, which is my only guess to why they didn't work. Please, if anybody can help me out with this problem, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Cole]

Are the used DVDs scratched at all, or just plain grubby? Try a DVD cleaning kit. Or have you tried a CD/DVD Rom lense cleaning disc?

[blackoutmusic]

No, the DVDs appear to be in good condition. I haven't tried cleaning them yet since there seems to be no scratches anywhere. The other day I brought them to a friends house to test on his DVD player, and they worked fine. Only one of the DVDs work on my labtop, which is the movie Total Recall with Arnold Swartzenhager. I have no idea what the problem could be.

[Cole]

How old is the PC as it could just be dust on the DVD drive's lense.

[blackoutmusic]

The PC is almost a year and a half old now, could it be that my DVD player in my PC cannot read the newer DVDs out there?

[Cole]

I wouldn't have thought an eighteen month old drive should have any problems?

Have you tried a lens cleaning disc? Apart from that, I can't think of anything else I'm afraid.

[DVD_Ripper]

I have a Dell Inspiron labtop that I recently purchased some DVDs for. The labtop has a built in DVD player, and when I tried playing the DVDs, only one of the 7 I purchased worked. The DVDs were purchased used, which is my only guess to why they didn't work. Please, if anybody can help me out with this problem, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Had a DELL Inspiron until CPU blew up and it would read all commercial DVD's just fine and some DVD-R's (very picky)

[MikeV]

This may sound like a dumb question, but are they original DVDs or are they copies??

[blackoutmusic]

Cole- Thanks for the help, I'll try cleaning the lenses if their dirty and maybe that might work. If this helps, I tried inserting the CDs again today and it said that the DVD player could not read them...I'm guessing they might not be in the right format but I wish I knew.

MikeV- The DVDs are used, but not copies. They are the actual DVDs but have been purchased beforehand. It's not a dumb question at all. Anything helps.

If anyone one else has any idea, please post.
Thanks so much.

[krazydl]

have u installed any dvd software(such as power dvd or somthing like that) or any codec for dvd?(...just asking....)

[Suntan]

Will VLC play them?

-Suntan

[blackoutmusic]

krazydl- Yes, my computer came with the program WinDVD which is installed on my computer. Like I said, only one of the DVDs I bought worked in the DVD player when I used WinDVD to open it.

Suntan- I'm not sure what you mean by VCL, I'm not very good with this stuff so if u can rephrase it I can hopefully be able to answer you.

Thanks again.

[jimmalenko]

I have a Dell Inspiron labtop

Is a labtop better than alaptop ?

Jokes aside, when you put one of the non-working DVDs in, I'm gathering you hear the DVD drive spin up.

Do you normally let the DVD autorun or do you go into WinDVD and manually "load" the DVD ?

If you go into my computer or windows explorer, does the disc show up in your DVD drive ?

Laptop DVD-ROM drives have been known to be picky on what burnt media they play, but I am yet to see one that has real issues with any commercial DVDs.

If your friend can play them on a standalone DVD player then the discs are not at fault.

[Suntan]

@blackoutmusic

VLC Media Player.

It is a freeware player that plays pretty much anything, including DVDs. It doesn't use Directshow or VFW (it uses its own playback filters) so sometimes it is good for trying to diagnose Directshow/VFW problems as well as being a nice standalone player.

The interface for opening a disc is kind of different so look at the documentation.

-Suntan

[Capmaster]

Is the region number of the used DVDs you bought the correct one?

[blackoutmusic]

jimmalenko- At first I let the DVDs go into autorun, and the disks would spin up in the drive but nothing would happen. So I would go into My Computer and manually open it, and I recieved a message saying that the disk in the drive cannot be read and to check if the disk has scratches or if it's formatted. I've already realized it can't be the disks, but I don't know what the problem is. They have no scratches on them and are in good condition. I tried opening it with WinDVD and that doesn't work either.

Suntan- I'll check out that program and see if that will be able to open them. Thanks alot.

Capmaster- Like I said, I'm not too good with this stuff so if you can rephrase it I'll hopefully be able to get what you mean.

[jimmalenko]

I think the DVD-ROM is the problem.

[shmizer]

I am betting on the problem being WINDVD. It came installed on my laptop and it always seems to have problems playing DVD-Rs and some regular DVDs. I prefer Power DVD myself as I can play most DVDs, burned or not.

[blackoutmusic]

Hi again, sorry I haven't replied in a while but I just recently returned from vacation.

Thanks to everyone for the help in here and if you have any more ideas please post them.

I'm still working on it...

-blackoutmusic

[Bearbegr]

I have a Sony Vaio Laptop that I had for a year... About a few months ago I started not being able to play dvds well... (actual DVDs) The drive would spin Extremely loud and you could hear that is was trying to play. Well, to make a long story short, the DVD drive was out and I had to get a new drive... So I guess that would be your problem, because mine too was picky about the DVDs... The newer the DVD, the more unlikely it would play...