My DVD Drives Won't Work, Please Help!

[Kane]

PC games and I think CDs work fine on my drives, but for some strange reason my drives don't even recognize DVDs. If you put a DVD inside it will the computer won't even acknowledge that it is there. I will just read as "CD-Drive E" or whatever and nothing will happen.


I have an HP Media Center computer and it just seems strange to me why it won't work. I called the support team at HP and they said that I have to erase some DVD burner or whatever. The only way to do so he says is to restore the computer to its beginning thus erasing every file. I have to go through a long process of “Destructive Recovery From Partition” he calls it to get my DVD to work. What kind of crap is that? All that for the DVD player that should be working, damn! Now I am starting to regret getting stuff from them.

Does anyone know another way I can get my DVD drives to recognize DVDs? Thanks!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

You can try reinstalling the driver (most likely available from HPs web site).
You'll have to know your model# of both the PC and the DVD drive.

 

[Chronuss]

try what Bob said and attempt reinstalling the drivers, and just like he said they are more than likely available on the HP site. also, do you have DVD player software installed so you can view the movies? I don't have a DVD player on my PC and from knowledge of them, you need software to actually view the movies, just like you would need software to view .MPEGs or .MOVs.

 

[AnimEdge]

I will just read as "CD-Drive E" or whatever and nothing will happen

If it says that it is a CD drive then well eather its a CD Drive or your computer thinks its a CD-Drive, now if it says DVD-Drive E then it could be a driver or software issue

Now if your Media Center has Windows XP Media Edition then you kinda got jipped Cuz that is many used for well Media Centers (EX: Conecting it to a TV to watch downloaded movies and TiVo type content. Not really as a home family computer)

Now you said it can do everything but play DVDs, i woudl make sure it is a DVD-Drive(has it ever played DVD) then i would if you can uninstall all the driver for it(Via Device Manager), the software used, and remove it physiclay(well just unplug the power to it form inside, reload it and see what it does, chances are it should pretent that you never had a cd/dvd drive

Find outthen who makes your burner, if it came from HP, then go to the HP site, find out what computer/cd-drive it is and download the updated drivers and software(they usally do give you your software back like the burning software and so on from tehre site) then turn off your computer plug in the drive and restart, it shoudl come back with things saying that "Windows has found new hardware!" if you found and downloaded the drivers from the compainy then dont let windows install anything! say no and cancle then manually install all of the drivers and software then restart and it shoudl work

 

[RRouuselot]

You can try reinstalling the driver (most likely available from HPs web site).
You'll have to know your model# of both the PC and the DVD drive.

Easier said than done. HP’s website and Techs are not overly helpful. I found this out because I have the same problem at the moment. My DVD/CD player doesn't work and hasn't since December of 2004.
The drivers for HP DVD/CD players are not compatible if you have Service Pack 2 installed. Thank you Bill Gates :bird:
My PC is going into the shop sometime soon and I will let you know what they do to it.

 

[AnimEdge]

Really one of our computers has a HP Cd-Burner with SP2 and it runs just fine, but you could just be talking about dvd/cd so

I found HP driver pages to be pretty easy if you know your exact model number and crap like that

 

[RRouuselot]

Really one of our computers has a HP Cd-Burner with SP2 and it runs just fine, but you could just be talking about dvd/cd so

I found HP driver pages to be pretty easy if you know your exact model number and crap like that

They work fine if you installed the DVD/CD stuff before you down load SP2.
For the drivers for my PC and several others there was a big warning about drivers SP2 and downloading the drivers.

 

[Chronuss]

They work fine if you installed the DVD/CD stuff before you down load SP2.
For the drivers for my PC and several others there was a big warning about drivers SP2 and downloading the drivers.

SP2 for what...XP Home or Pro? I run Win2K Pro.

 

[8253]

If nothing else, try a generic driver. For some reason this works sometimes when the original driver will not work.

 

[Kreth]

Along with drivers, you may need to update the firmware for your drive. If you try this, make sure you follow the instructions very carefully. You can render your drive completely unusable if you're not careful...

Jeff