Divx's on DVD-R play in standalone player, but PC DVD drives won't

[Kapre]

Hi there everyone, I have a weird problem; I posted this here as I wasn’t sure what forum was most appropriate. An overseas penpal sent me a burnt 8x DVD-R of Divx home movies; I put it in my standalone Divx-compatible DVD player, and after a bit of complaining about the disc it played the files, with a bit of skipping. So I thought I'd try and see if I got a better result on my PC; however, neither of my 2 computers will read the disc. Their DVD drives won't even recognise there is a disc in them, so I can't rip the files either. So a couple of questions:

1. How come a cheapo Divx Dvd player can read/play the disc, when even my new computer can't?

2. Are there any extraction/recovery programs that can rip files from a disc that the computer thinks isn't there (ie. forcing the drive to do what it thinks can't be done)?

Okay, thanks,

Neil.

[Jeremiah58]

1. Usually cheapo DVD media cause this trouble.
2. Yes, Isobuster can rip those files from disc.

[Kapre]

Thanks mate, but Isobuster won't read it; it just keeps saying 'Blank CD'.

[Jeremiah58]

Wierd.
I suggest that you try the disc on some other (friends) DVD ROM drives.
In similar cases, I use a very old Toshiba DVD ROM, which reads most anything I throw in it.
Keep trying - the disc is readable, since your standalone player reads it. Good luck.

[Kapre]

Thanks again dude, I've tried it on 4 different computer dvd drives, and none of them recognise the disc; Explorer usually just shows the drive is empty, although on one it brought up a message like 'the disc may be corrupted....'.

So, back to my 2nd question; are there any extraction/recovery programs that can rip files from a disc that a computer thinks is blank/non-existent? There's data on there, so there must be some way to get it off....? Cheers,

Neil.

[KBeee]

If your DVD drives can't see the disk, then any software won't be able to get at the data on it.
Have you tried cleaning the disk?

[handyguy]

Did you look at the disk & see what manf it is? Could be an unfinalized disk, which is why it might play in a player.

[Jeremiah58]

Kapre,
Try to use this trick:
disconect from the Internet,
shutdown your firewall,
open Isobuster and point it to your DVD drive,
now insert the disc in that drive.
I don't know why, and it may sound silly, but this trick worked for me in the cases of otherwise unreadable cheapo DVD discs.
And yes, it could be helpful if you identify the disc.
I've read about some other data recovery programs like File Scavanger, but I've never tried it.

[Kapre]

Hi again, sorry I wasn't back sooner! Okay, thanks Jeremiah58, I tried your suggestions about firewalls and Isobuster, etc.; still no dice! The disc is clean, not even any medium scratches on it.... I tried the demo of 'File Scavenger'; it stated the error 'Boot Sector not found. Please use the Long Search [method]'. Tried that, still nothing.

As for the disc, it is an 'epro' 8x DVD-R; I tried using a prog called Dvd Identifier to get more info on the disc. It came up with the following when I scanned the disc:

"[17:40:33] Waiting For Drive To Initialize Disc...
[17:40:44] Unable To Initialize Disc In Time : Not ready - Incompatible medium installed [02/30/00]"

So I don't know much more about it; if you can think of anything else, it'd be appreciated! Thanks, Kapre.

[Jeremiah58]

I'm sorry, mate, maybe there is only one remaining way to salvage the content of that disc and that would be to connect your standalone player (which plays that disc) to a standalone DVD recorder and rerecord videos in DVD format.

[Kapre]

Thanks mate; it was an option I had thought of, but was hoping to avoid due to the skipping! Cheers,

Kapre.