DVD ROM stopped reading DVD's and only readds CD's - PLEASE HELP

slowen

This morning when going to watch a DVD on my PC and I normally get the autoplay message and it plays directly through power DVD but this did not happen so I went to click the DVD icon which had now changed to a square disc similar to a floppy drive and will only read CD's.

Can a drive change from a DVD ROM into a CD ROM as it refuses to play any DVD format or is my drive knackered.

Any help would be appreciated

blinky

How old is it? My gut instinct is that the laser diode has partially died (DVD's and CD's use different frequency / wavelengths of light hence why it will read one but not the other). Have you tried different DVD discs? (including original DVD-ROMS)

Lawbag_2

have you installed any programs lately? Direct X?

robnye

have you been playing different region dvd's....?

as i know most dvd drive's in pc's will only allow so many region changes before they lock....... i run some software which detects the dvd region and controls the dvd player.

blinky

robnye wrote:

have you been playing different region dvd's....?

as i know most dvd drive's in pc's will only allow so many region changes before they lock....... i run some software which detects the dvd region and controls the dvd player.

Region control is done in two parts by Windows XP, i) by hardware in the drive, ii) by the operating system.

slowen

PC is about 8 months old and the discs are region 2, I could not understand why the icon in "my computer" would change, I may go out and just buy a new DVD reading drive as they are only around £30 but I want to make sure that the problem is down to the drive and not the PC

Gushie_2

This is only a suggestion if you dont feel confident doing it dont try it as you could damage the drive (but TBH if its broken anyway....)


I had the same problem with two different Pioneer DVDRom drives a while ago, my fix was this take the outer casing off you will prob also have to remove the main Circuit Board (Antis Static Precautions should be taken)

If you take a close look at the laser diode you will see a very very small POT .. give this a slight tweak clockwise (by slight i really do mean slight) put the drive back together and you should be able to read DVD's again

slowen

Thanks for all the advice, Someone who works with my brother told me the driver maybe corrupt so to un-install it and then let XP re-install it and upto now it seems to have worked.

Don't know how the drive got corrupted though

fayraz

I have a weird problem with my Pioneer 109 DVD-RW drive it will not read burnt DVDs unless it has been burnt with the drive.

Anyone else had problems like this?

slowen

fayraz wrote:

I have a weird problem with my Pioneer 109 DVD-RW drive it will not read burnt DVDs unless it has been burnt with the drive.

Anyone else had problems like this?

Only time my reader would not read DVD's is when they were a bad batch of discs so I tend to purchase middle to high market discs.

Do you get this problem all the time and are you using the same batch of blank DVD's?

You could try deleting the driver through the device manager as what I did and maybe that will sort it out as XP will seach for the driver once the PC has started

boogiemaster

Update the bios on the Pioneer 109, go to the site and get the software to flash the bios.
It updates the bios and should enable you to use the disks.