michaeljohn

click on one of our sponsors! OR REMOVE ADS

My DVD drive doesn't recognize any disk I insert. My CD Rom drive does. Device manager says DVD Drive is working fine. Only thing I noticed recently is that burn time for a DVD has increased. Oh, my FTP Client doesn't show anything on the DVD drive either, as it will when there is a disk in it. Matter of fact, I can't even switch to it on FTP client.

So, my guesses are:

1) Damn thing needs to be cleaned.
2) It's broken. How else do you tell besides device manager?

Running XP. Thanks for any help.

___________________________________________

BackdoorJesus

LOL nice re-direct dog!
Have you added a drive recently? if you have do you have the drive jumpers set to one master & one slave per IDE controller? is power plugged into everything?

If so, then you need to go into your BIOS settings (as you boot up <setup>) and make sure all your drives are being detected.

go into your "disk manager" by right-clicking on My Computer/Manage and select Disk Manager from the tree

make sure your disk drives are not conflicting with one another as far as letter -> drive goes & make sure every drive is assigned a letter as well, would be where I would start looking

___________________________________________

michaeljohn

Everything was working fine earlier today. When I was running ME, it took about 25 minutes to burn a 4.4 gig DVD. It takes about 15 on this computer. Lately, I noticed times were slowing down. About 5 PM, I burned a DVD and it took 35 minutes. My resources were pretty used up and the next one took about 100 minutes. Then I rebooted and can't access shit. As I said, it shows up in my device manager, and everything is working. I can reboot and try what you say in BIOS, but I suspect it will show up as ok.

___________________________________________

BackdoorJesus

make sure to defrag your hard drives regularly. do a defrag & see if it helps speed things up.

___________________________________________

licupssy

Make sure it's actually shows as a DVD in Device manager. It's properties should contain a DVD-Region Tab. You may have to reinstall you DVD software for it to work as a DVD. With the MS drivers it will just be recognized as a CD-ROM.

If you have NERO you might try the speed test program in tool kit.

Changing from ME to XP there are some software and Hardware problems. You might run the compatibility test for XP. I think its on the XP cd or you can find it on MS's website.

___________________________________________

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC

michaeljohn

another thing, when I put a CD or DVD in a drive, my mouse arrow adds a CD icon next to it until the disk is ready to view. the icon comes on, but when it goes off, nothing is recognized.

___________________________________________

mainstay

And run an "Error Check" too!!! Once you fix things NEVER run ME again. If you have to run a old version of Windows because of some software you have.....your much better off running Windows 98SE. Muchless "buggy" & more stable than "ME"!

michaeljohn

This computer never ran ME. The burner was used on old computer previously. Everything shows fine on Device manager, I have said this twice before. No one agrees with my diagnosis in post 1?. Also, it was reading disks, and burning them a few hours ago.

___________________________________________

h1ten

so your saying it works on a DIFFERENT computer running ME and once placed in yours it fucks up. OK, Try rolling back the driver/ uninstalling it then start over. If that doesn't help try to go to your computers restore feature see if there is anything u installed that might have made it 'not work'. Lastly u could try to install it in another computer with XP. It might just need a firmware/driver update.

licupssy

If it worked on the computer with XP and just poop out then either it is died on possible may need cleaning. I had a DVD player that was having a problem reading disk and a ran a lens cleaning disk on it and it brought it back to life.

If cleaning it doesn't help try a speed test program like the Nero speed test. I'd try test running it on a commercial CD and/or DVD.

If it won't work after cleaning and can't read any disk it's probably hammer time. I don't know what is exactly checked by bios or device manager but I would suppose there are a lot of things they don't check. I know DVD drives won't work as DVD drives without the software installed. So if you reinstalled the software in case you have a corrupted file that should solve that problem. You mentioned about the burn time increasing, maybe the drive motor was crapping out and finally died.

You might want to try the support on the factory site and see if they have covered the problem. I doubt if there is much you can do other than using a lens cleaner. If it's fairly new you might want to check on having it fixed at the factory. Although, you could get a replacement for around $40+ at someone like overstock.com

___________________________________________

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good! ~~~SWTWC

michaeljohn

Nero Speed test works for the CD rom but not for the DVD rom. It won't recognize a disk is inserted. Guess I will go buy a cleaner!

___________________________________________

REJECT1979

i might be wrong but it sounds like the laser is dead i had one that done the same thing
and it was the laser i had to get a new drive

michaeljohn

problem solved, DVD cleaner fixed it in an instant. Full speeds recorded on Nero test.

___________________________________________

mainstay

Glad to hear. Yeah, it's a lot easier to read a CD than a DVD. I never thought it was your DVD Drive, because if I remember correctly we have the same burner. The Memorex 16x DVD Drive was voted the best in its class. It's been out for over 2 years now without any major changes. God, I hate to know how many DVD's I've burned or cloned using NERO.......probably over 200. And that does'nt include Hard Drive backups! Glad your "back on the road"!!!