I have two DVD-RW Drives in my computer. A NEC 2500A RW-DVD (shows as a DVD-RW in My Computer) and an LG GSA4166B (Shows as a DVD-RAM) drives. Under Properties they show as DVD/CD-ROM. I do not know if this matters but thought I would mention it.

Recently a new problem has crept up. Both Drives will not recognize a couple of Commercial DVD's I bought. This has happend with three so far.

The DVD's are playable in my livingroom DVD player but my computer does not recognize them. The computer drives recognize and play other commercial DVDs just fine just not these.

When I go into explorer, the drives show as empty. When first inserting the DVDs the drives do try to read them. They just do not show up as being in the drive at all.

I had planned on reformatting my hard drive anyway so that was my first step. I zeroed out the HDD using the Manufactuers tools and reinstalled Windows XP Home. I installed my DVD drivers and programs and tried again. Same problem.

I have totally updated my windows XP Home with Service packs, security patches, etc. They still won't play the movie DVDs. Since this first happened I have rented a couple movies and found that one of the three wasn't recognized.

I also uninstalled and reinstalled under device manager as suggested on another post. And I used one of the DVD cleaner disks with the brush just in case.

I am out of things to try. It is confusing that they work just fine in a stand alone DVD player but in the drives they are not recognized. I did a search on the web and in Microsoft, 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. Any help would be appreciated. Any clues?

TIA

If you can right click and get the Properties of these DVD's do you see any format difference from the ones that you can play?

Originally Posted by jephree

If you can right click and get the Properties of these DVD's do you see any format difference from the ones that you can play?

I wish. The right click information is below. I have decided this is probably some new copyright BS. If this is a new copyright protection thing, I know I cannot be the only one experiencing this.

DVD-RW Drive (NEC 2500A) loaded with "problem DVD" (shows same when put into LG drive)
Type: CD drive
File System: Unknown

Used Space: 0 bytes
Free Space: 0 Bytes

DVD-RAM (LG and shows same when in NEC drive) loaded with "The Mexican" a working Commercial DVD with some nasty scratches that plays beautifully.

THE_MEXICAN (E: ) CD Drive 7.83 GB O bytes free

Properties under General Tab with The Mexican loaded:
Type: CD Drive (? I don't understand why this says this)
File System: UDF

Capacity: (filled, don't feel like typing numbers)

Under Hardware tab: both drives showing (under type): DVD/CD-Rom drives
Driver is Microsoft, Date: 7/01/2001, version 5.1.2535.0

I have installed ASPI layers and the newer drivers but they do not seem to show under properties. If anyone knows why or where I need to look to change the drivers, I would love to know. My system keeps showing the MS drivers (Keeping fingers crossed this MIGHT be the issue)

When I click on the drive with the DVD in Explorer, "Please insert a disk into drive F:” No matter what I have done, this continues. So frustrated.

normally...(i take it you run something such as windows media player or power dvd) it should ask you if you want to change your drives region do play foreign made films or so on mine has done this before on commercial films such as lotr snatch and so on hope this helps

I just wanted to update this post for others having a similar problem. It was not copyright protection as I feared.

After reading about the BTC brand of DVD drives, I decided to purchase one. From what I understand the BTC brand, while poor quality for writing, is very good at reading very scratched and damaged DVDs. So I replaced one drive of my writers with a cheapo BTC DVD-ROM.

After installing the drive, I tested the BTC drive with a working DVD movie. Then I put in one of the commercial DVDs I was having problems with. I was able to get it to show in Explorer and even though the drive kept trying to read it and was very slow, it was an improvement. At least something was happening. It took a bit of ejecting the disk, and restarting the computer but now everything is up and running fine. I am delighted. I do not know if it was the uninstalling of the drives or what; I am just happy things are working and I do not have to worry about DVDs that won’t play in my computer.

And just a note, to get Windows to re-install the drivers I uninstalled both drives. Then I hooked up each drive one at a time. This was not something I did when re-installing Windows XP the first time. I do not know if this was the fix or if the BTC drive was the fix but something worked. Hope this helps anyone having problems. The drive came from Geeks.com and cost $16 plus shipping. NAF, etc

Thanks for the update and the info!

Let us know if we can help further in the future!




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