Reading some commercial DVDs

[Dazed Woman]

I am probably in the wrong forum but could not find a place to post this. I am not trying to copy these DVDs just play them on my computer. Here is the problem...

I have been searching for the answer to this problem for a month now. I have posted on a few computer forums and thought I would try the DVD related sites now. I hope I can find the answer.

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. This has happened with three so far.

The DVD's are playable in my living room 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 Manufactures tools and reinstalled Windows XP Home. I installed my DVD drives, firmware and programs and tried again. Same problem. I am totally updated my windows XP Home with Service packs, security patches, etc. They still won't play the movie DVDs. I have rented a few other DVDs that have the same problem. Not all, just a few.

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. And it is BOTH the drives. I wonder if it is something in the OS or a setting in the device mgr? While seaching through all the drive stuff on my computer, I came up with an area where the drivers were Nero settings instead of ASPI. Think this has something to do with it? I can't find that area again. Duh. And am not sure if they were even drivers. Any help would be appreciated. Any clues?

[setarip_old]

Hi!This has happened with three so far.1) What are the three DVD Titles and the Regions?

2) What Region are your two drives set to?

3) have you tried cleaning these three DVDs?

4) Are there any signs of physical damage on these three DVDs?

[Dazed Woman]

I live in the USA so Region isn't an issue. It is set as 1. I tried cleaning the disks although they were brand new. When I have put disks in the drives that are damaged, the error message is different.

Thanks for trying.

[setarip_old]

Again I would ask, what are the three DVD Titles and their Regions?

[Video Dude]

The same thing has been happening with my LG recently with commercial DVDs. I usually have to keep ejecting it between 10-30 times for the drive to see the disc. For some odd reason, it seems when you insert the DVD when you first boot the computer and see the bios load screen, the disc will be recognized when you get into windows. You can try that and see if it works for you too.

[Dazed Woman]

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.