DVD drive won't play DVD's?

[Technoed]

OK, my Compaq Notebook's DVD Drive, SD-R2312, can play CD's at the moment but it can't play DVD's and it's really getting annoying now. I don't have a clue how to fix it. So, basically, I was just wondering if anyone out there had a possible solution to the problem?

What happens is, when a DVD is loaded into the drive, it tries to read it but fails to, but when a CD is entered, it reads it fine. What's the deal?

Thanks in advance,
Technoed.

[Bovon]

Well..there is a difference in lasers in a DVD vs a CD. These lasers do go bad..with CD-R's, usually it will quit reading home burned CD's before it will stop reading anything. You can try to clean the laser lens inside the drive..but that rarely fixes one. If you (or anyone) smokes around the computer...niccotine will coat the lasers lens, and that will deteriorate the laser a lot.

Try cleaning your DVD's squeaky clean...sometimes, I use windex on the under side and that seems to help when a laser gets weak. The laser beam will not wade thru fingerprints etc long.

[slinky]

Is this a new notebook? If so, you need to get yourself a dvd decoder before you can play any dvds in windows (Powerdvd, Windvd, Nvdvd).

[RayH]

Do you have a DVD player?

[Jeordiewhite]

Yes as he mentioned above he does have a dvd-rom:
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/netcomdi...sd10atnot.html
Are you playing a normal dvd or a burnt dvd±r? Some older dvd-roms cant play burnt media. Does windows detect it as a dvd drive? Like when no media is inserted it would read as 'dvd-r drive' in my computer or go to the propertys of the dvd drive and go to hardware section and choose the drive and go to propertys to check there as well. Then when in that same properties setting make sure the dvd drive is the same region as the dvds you are trying.
Cleaning the lens would be a good idea to try before ruling out that it has gone bad.

[Kuasimodem]

What happens is, when a DVD is loaded into the drive, it tries to read it but fails to, but when a CD is entered, it reads it fine. What's the deal?

Combo drives have two seperate laser elements, one for the DVD playback, and one for CD reading/recording. It sounds like the DVD laser element has gone bad.

The bad news is that repairing your current drive is more expensive than buying a new drive and having it installed (laptop drives are very hard to replace, not to be undertaken by a novice).