DVD-ROM drive won't recognise DVD-ROMs?

Just got a DVD-ROM game, unfortunately my DVD-ROM drive doesn’t recognise that the disc is in the drive for some reason. It plays CD-ROMs fine, though. MY OS is Windows XP, the DVD-ROM is ‘16x Min Play’. The disc itself is brand new.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Are you trying to look at a movie DVD? Or a written DVD RW/R +/-?

For a regular movie DVD you should be able to put the disc into the drive and autoplay, if it’s working (XP has a few known problems), should start Media Player. If autoplay is disabled you should be able to start any normal DVD player and it should find the DVD.

The key is, when you insert the DVD, you should be able to read the directories on the DVD. If you can’t even see that, but regular CDs work, you might have a defective drive. If you’re trying to read a written DVD, it might be because your drive can’t read the -/+ or RW formats (it should say).