Laptop DVD problem

Ok, so this laptop has a CD burner/DVD combo drive.

I think the drive is bad, but I'm not 100% sure.

You put in a CD and the computer reads it just fine. You put a DVD in there and the machine gets sluggish. It is having problems reading the DVD. I installed two different DVD players with the same results.

It takes quite a while for the machine to recognize the movie.

Then the movie plays bad, it is jumpy, it skips, stuff like that. But you can play music just fine.

I have reset the BIOS settings to default, just to see if that had anything at all to do with it. The computer recognizes it as a combo drive for sure. I pulled out the drive reseated it, uninstalled the drive and all that. Put it back in with no luck.

The OS seems to be running pretty smoothly with the exception of the drive. I don't necessarily think the system is screwed up.

If I had to guess I would say this drive is bad in some way. This guy had this machine plugged into the same socket as a refrigerator, so I think that could have causde a surge in the laptop, since he didn't have a surge protector. I had a similar drive act something like this when a surge of electricity hit it. In some ways it seemed fine, but it would mess up when it would burn music, and the video would skip.

If anyone has any ideas to add, let me know. Otherwise, I guess I will make an assumption that the drive is messed up.

Troy

This is exactly why I dont like combo drives. Anyways what software are you using to view the DVDs? Have you tried a few different ones? Obviously windows media player is one but try another player if you have one or look for a free one on the net and try that. If you find that the DVD playback is bad on more than one player its highly likely that the DVD portion of the combo drive is faulty most likely the laser. Other than that I dont think there is much you can do as these drives are quite 'disposable' items and are rarely worth repairing since replacements are usually dirt cheap.
Cheers

You've tried different DVD's, right? This link talks about enabling DMA..

Are you running XP? VISTA?

club.cdfreaks.com...

I just went on the assumption the thing is bad, and ordered another one. To my understanding this thing was working not too long ago. A power surge can mess these things up. With this thing being plugged up on the same outlet as refrigerator, I think he may have left himself open to damage, especially since he wasn't using a surge protector.

Troy

Originally posted by cybertroy
I just went on the assumption the thing is bad, and ordered another one. To my understanding this thing was working not too long ago. A power surge can mess these things up. With this thing being plugged up on the same outlet as refrigerator, I think he may have left himself open to damage, especially since he wasn't using a surge protector.

Troy

might be the decoder or something. maybe too much stuff installed on windows.. might be the cd or something.

I tried different DVDs. The DVD players I installed were apparently installed fresh. I didn't see any installed, unless they vanished some how.

Troy

Originally posted by cybertroy
I tried different DVDs. The DVD players I installed were apparently installed fresh. I didn't see any installed, unless they vanished some how.

Troy

yea but if you have vista and you have all that auxillary stuff on there is slows down the computer. thats why i hate vista its always some excuse about do this and this and that and that. its weird. but i know someone when he plays music his system runs lame because he has weather and all that other stuff on there.



but also you computer uses either a software or hardware dvd decoder. wich means maybe a driver issue for your graphics card or maybe a system overload and your machine is all weird because you have too much stuff on there.

This is Windows XP. The computer really seemed to run pretty good, except for the DVD drive.

He took the computer to someone not that long ago, and I think it may have been reformatted then, because the DVD player software was missing. This can happen if you don't use the original disks that came with the machine, then you end up not having things like DVD player software. The laptop was missing the video driver as well. I'm guessing they just stuck in an educational XP disk they had.

Troy