DVD drive help, please!

Hi, ATS. I'm having trouble with my dvd drive. I tried watching a movie last night but the drive acts like I didn't even put a disc in. It works fine with game cds but it just won't read my dvds. It's a dvd drive, too. It played another movie I tried but now won't. What's going on here and how can I fix it?
I'm running a Dell laptop with Windows 8. I don't know the make or model but can look if it matters. I checked the drives and windows said that the drive was working properly. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

a reply to: Skid Mark

The best thing to do is to re-install the driver for that. It's just not reading certain formats anymore.

Just go to the Dell website, punch in your model number and you should be able to find drivers for it that can be re-installed.

If you'd like to post the model number here, I can find the links for you

~Tenth

Probably dirt/ dust try to blow it away, if you smoke it can be much worse as nicotine sticks to the lens and you need to take out the drive or use a cleaner disk.

Usually there is one screw at the bottom of the laptop holding the drive in place, remove it and take out the drive see if you can get access to the lens and clean it with a very soft material, like a cotton stick.

Remember to remove power and battery.

Search youtube for tutorial for removing disk if possible.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Also just to throw this out there although it is probably not the problem....the dvd is the correct region right? But ya its most likely a driver issues....sometimes windows 8 has updated on me and then the driver i had no longer worked. I even have a thread on here somewhere with a speaker problem after a windows update.

a reply to: Mianeye

If it's reading Games but not DVD sounds more like file format issue.

MKV or MP4 tend to be wonky with hard media if you don't have the exact right drivers for the device.

~Tenth

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Thank you so much! I looked at the sticker below the keyboard and it says Inspiron M731R. Is that the model number?

a reply to: Skid Mark

It sure is, gimme a few mins and I'll work that out for you.

a reply to: Mianeye

I'll get some canned air and see what happens. Thanks.

a reply to: rockpaperhammock

Actually, now that you mention it, I was having problems watching The Walking Dead on it the other day and it said something about the region. It let me change the region on it and played fine after that.

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Ah.. that's true, i missed the part that it read games.

Then it most likely is a software issue.

Look away from above post of mine Skid Mark

Here's the website for your drivers:

www.dell.com...

You won't see one there for the drive itself, but you wanna install the one:

Under Chipset - select the first one.

AMD A76M FCH, AMD Radeon HD 8510G Driver

It should include a basic driver for your DVD drive.


~Tenth

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Thanks a billion. You are beyond awesome!

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. I keep telling people how great this site is and how genuinely kind and helpful members here are. I hope that some of them come here to contribute eventually. This really is a great site and the members here rock.

originally posted by: Skid Mark
a reply to: tothetenthpower

Thanks a billion. You are beyond awesome!

Don't thank me yet, it might not work. But I have a couple of other thoughts up my sleeve if it doesn't .

~Tenth

a reply to: Skid Mark

haha oh man that could be really bad...let me look around for you...i think sometimes you can change a region but then it like sets to that region. Ill see if we can set it back to default...i know computers will allow you to change it once because I used to do this overseas then come back and the bastards wouldn't change back to another region...


www.robholland.com... this link explains it and explains how you can only change your region a set number of times...hopefully it is more than once though.

a reply to: rockpaperhammock

Thanks. It said that I can change it 5 times. Whew! I bookmarked the site that you posted and am checking it out now. I'll go through it and see what's what. Thanks again for the help.

ETA: Okay, I did all that and see that the region is set to Region 1, which is United States. That's correct, then. I bought the DVDs here in the US.

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Okay. I'll try anything at this point. I have the drivers downloading now. It's at 90.9 MB out of 304 now. The internet is slow so it might take a while.

If it is a region issue, is it possible to change disc drives to region free, like some stand alone disc players?

a reply to: tothetenthpower

Okay, got the driver downloaded and installed. Tried putting a movie in, nothing. Tried a music cd, nothing. Tried a game, nothing. In all cases the light for the drive blinked a few times and it sounded like it was doing something, then nothing.

a reply to: Skid Mark

Do you have a different DVD player in which you can try the discs? Do any movies work at all, or just not certain ones? The region should be listed on the DVD case, and if you have it set to region 1, that should be good for US DVDs. The driver updates are a good idea, but don't trust the device manager. That often states everything is up to date, when in reality, it isn't. Go to the website for the drive manufacturer, Dell, if it's theirs, and look for driver updates manually. Assuming you have done all that, have you tried a simple restart? Sometimes, that works. Also, you state that the drive light blinks, and it makes noise, then does nothing. Did you go into the file explorer and see if the disc shows up there, for the drive? It could just be that autoplay isn't on, which isn't a bad thing. If none of this works, I'd say contact Dell, though they are likely to suggest the same things first, even if you tell them you already did those things. Tech support can be funny that way. Frustrating, I know!