Can't even read DVDs with NEC 1300A - help!

[vulture99]

I am unable to simply play regular DVDs in my NEC 1300A. I've tried playing The Matrix DVD using WinDVD and Windows Media Player, and both crash with fatal errors. I'm running WinXP SP1 on a 3.0 GHz Intel box with 1 GB memory.

The drive shows up in Device Manager. When I load a DVD I am able to see the drive and the DVD title in Windows Explorer (although the system seems to read the DVD for a long time before then, with lots of HDD activity). I can open files on the DVD (like README.TXT on the Matrix DVD, for example) - I just can't play the DVD. I tried messing with ASPI, including installing the 4.71.2 drivers from Adaptec, and trying a couple of different WNASPI32.DLL versions. I have a copy of Nero 6, so I tried their WNASPI32.DLL as well as the original version that ships with winXP and the one from Adaptec. Same crashes occur every time.

The drive is an OEM model. It has had this behavior since I got it with the original firmware. I have also tried Herrie's 1.07 and 1.08 (as of today) firmware versions, with no difference.

HELP! How can I make this thing work? I haven't tried burning any DVDs yet - first I want to make sure I can even play back standard DVDs.

THANK YOU for any help.

[ebenton]

Your "Computer Details" says you do not have a DVD-ROM. If this is true, do you still have your old DVD-ROM that was in your PC before you installed the DVD burner? If so, you might try re-installing it to see if it will play your DVDs.
If you still have the same problem, then you know it's probably not your DVD-burner. It might be some file-association problem in Windows or something.
If you do not still have your old DVD-ROM, you might consider going out and buying one. They're pretty cheap. If you don't have room for it internally, or if you don't want to reinstall your old one internally, get a $40 - $50 USB/Firewire case and use it externally.
Even if the extra DVD-ROM doesn't help you solve this problem, it's not a bad idea to have one, just to use for ripping DVDs. It saves wear and tear on your DVD burner laser.

[vulture99]

ebenton, thanks for the idea. I swapped the NEC drive with a DVD-ROM drive from another box. Both drives had problems playing DVDs, so I focused on the OS and software. First I suspected a DirectX problem, but I'm using the latest version and dxdiag indicated no problems. And ASPI is as good as I can get it.

Turns out it was the software! My version of WinDVD is old, and apparently doesn't work well with WinXP. Not sure why WMP wouldn't work. Anyway, I downloaded the trial version of PowerDVD and had no problems playing DVDs on either drive. I also tried Videolan's VLC player, which worked fine. I think I'll stick with that one for now until/unless I find I need more features.