I’ve got a laptop with dvd drive that stopped working. The weird thing is it just won’t play dvd’s anymore. CD’s and cd-roms work fine. It happened grdually over time.
For a while it would only play certain dvd’s. The strange thing is that it could be the most scratched up dvd and it would play it, but a brand new one out of the box might not play. Anyway, no dvd’s play now. I suspect it’s a hardware problem but I’m hoping someone out there might have a software fix.
There may have been something different about the ones that played and the ones that didn’t, like dual layer-ness or different copy protection schemes.
I suppose you could try playing/reading a DVD using a different program.
It also might be worth a try cleaning the drive’s laser lens.
This isn’t unusual. I find that as the laser and/or positioning mechanism fails, they usually quit reading DVDs first. You can try blowing it out with some canned air, or using a good quality cleaning disk. It (usually) can’t hurt, and may help.
The good news is that you can usually replace the DVD drive for $50 or so. And unless it’s a Mac, they’re usually a snap to replace. Like 5 minutes easy with nothing but a small Phillips head screwdriver. Even the ones that require you to open the case are usually not too bad (again, unless it’s a Mac, they are a bugger to work on).
Thanks for the help I’ll try that.