dvd-r doesn't play games

mudgekin

Hi

We have a dell inspiron 530 pc which is 2 years old. We also have an extended warranty on this. before I go any further I am a complete technophobe so any answers will need to be simple please:o

The problem that I have is that games will not work in the dvd-r drive. I can view data discs no problem but I cannot get games to autorun. I bought my husband civilisation last year and it loaded and played at that point. He went to play it the other day and it wouldn't play. He tried going into my computer and running it from the E drive (we have a C & D drive HD). Nothing happened and in fact he had to ctrl- alt-del out as the my computer box froze.

I decided that it was a faulty disc or had corrupted and so I uninstalled the game. I bought a new one and also a couple of others that were on sale in Amazon. They were delivered today and none of them will run :mad:

I have tried running it from run E:/setup.exe as instructed on one of the games to no avail. I have checked the didcs on my laptop and they run fine. The PC is well above the minimum spec needed for any of the games so I dob't understand it. I am also confused as to why the original game installed and ran no problem when it was purchased and doesn't now. It seems that it is only games as I have loaded stuff from cd with no problem. I have checked and it is definately a dvd-r drive and not a just a cd drive. Besides, the game loaded fine originally and won't now.

Does anyone have any ideas before I brave calling dell which from past experience will be a nightmare?

thanks

JasX

mudgekin wrote: »

I bought my husband civilisation last year and it loaded and played at that point. He went to play it the other day and it wouldn't play.

FYI if you're talking about Civ4 the latest official (Civ4:BTS) patch quietly included a 'No CD' requirement so it no longer cares if you have the CD in the drive or not.... if he goes and gets the latest patch somewhere (obbv can't do so within the game) he'll be able to play it.

EDIT: he can get the patches from the downloads section here:

http://www.civfanatics.com/

mudgekin

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

It isn't just civ that is the problem, it was only when he went to play it that we became aware of the issue. Since then we have tried to play dvds also to no avail.

I have doenloaded the latest drivers and it still won't read. I also used the little miocrosprt troubleshooting tool and that didn't fix it either. It would seem that I have to brave the indian call centre again and I still have flashbacks to the hideous affair that was when the fan stopped working and fried the motherboard and that is with their at home warranty

JasX

Well installing and uninstalling drivers is a good first step.

If that doesn't work worth clearing the upperfilters and lowerfilters for the drive (extra layers stuff can install itself in between windows and your optical drive and cause problems).

This describes how to clear them on windows vista, will be a similar process for XP or 7.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461

...you might even find the microsoft 'fixit' button works for you.

mudgekin

Thanks Jazx

I had tried the fixit thing. Just after I made the last post Dell called me. I managed to get a fab tech person who was superb and after going through lots of things I have an engineer coming to replace my faulty dvd drive with a new one :j:j

Hammyman

Probably only wants the lense cleaning. Mind you, if you've got a warranty then use it