DVD not recognized

[buffotoad]

I inherited an old Compaq Presario, running Win2000, that has a DVD-ROM drive. But it will not read any DVD's - I've tried playing regular store-bought DVD's, but they are not recognized by the drive. The drive will however play CD's.

I ran a utility called DVDINFO pro and it indicates that the drive is a Compaq DVD-ROM DVD-113R, and it indicates that it is a Pioneer manufactured in 1999. It also indicates that it should read DVD-ROM, DVD-R, and DVD-RW.

I don't have any -R or -RW discs, but have tried many store-bought DVD's in it and have never had any success.

Also, if I try to look at the files on a store-bought DVD, I get a message saying "insert a disc into drive E:'.

Anyone have any ideas about why it doesn't work?

Thanks.

[redwudz]

What program are you using to play DVD's? WIN2000 amd most MS OS's don't have native support for DVD's. You can use PowerDVD or one of the programs in the 'Tools" column to install the needed codec.

[buffotoad]

I'm sorry I didn't put it in my original post, but I am using PowerDVD, but it will always say 'no disc in drive E:'.

I admit to being new to this, but it seems like I've missed doing something very basic, because Windows Explorer doesn't even acknowledge a disk when I put a DVD in the drive.

[Mr. Twister]

I had this very same problem, with 2 DVD drives running under W2K. Neither would recognize any DVD's only CD's. I posted help in several different forums with basically no answers. I did a fresh W2k install and that fixed the problem.

[buffotoad]

Mr Twister, thanks for the info, but I already tried that. I was convinced that would work, but it didn't.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[redwudz]

It sounds like an OS problem, but a reinstall of the OS should have taken care of it. I would try a search in the Microsoft site to see if they cover your problem. The last possibility is something is wrong with the drive.

[dcsos]

On the birght side it might just be jumper on the drive..
If you losad WIN 2K and the jumper is wrong, you'll have same problem maybe tho'..so check master=slave vs. cable select

[Papa Lemming]

I am having the exact same problem with a brand new Sony CRX300A CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive.

I am also using Windows 2000 and the (provided with the hardware) PowerDVD XP 4.0 player.

This is driving me nuts. I really hope I did not end with a defective drive because I cannot return it (I bought it in the US but I do not live in the US). And I am clueless on what to do. The Device Manager shows everything okay, so does the BIOS. Everything seems okay until I put a DVD in the drive.

Windows Explorer won't recognize it and PowerDVD says "No disc in drive E:".

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[dcsos]

Did you read the post above yours?...
Try the jumper thing please, and if that doesn't work, please swap with the other device on your secondary IDE chain and re jumper

[Papa Lemming]

The jumper settings are okay.

The drive reads audio CDs, CD-Rs, and CD-RWs. But it cannot read DVDs.

The Sony chat guy said that probably the DVD laser is dead.

Tough luck.