DVD drives not reading DVDs?

[Marshmallowman]

Parnoid mode :

Have you played a "sony bmg" audio CD or similar recently? (of the notorious rootkit variety)
Or installed a starforce protected game etc.

These can effect your drive operation as the install hidden drivers etc.

Also
What may be worth a shot is to boot from live cd/dvd and see if you can access the dvd drive. That will tell you if the its hardware or a software issue.

A boot floppy with cd rom support may do the job as well.

[Gurm]

It boils down to either:

1. DVD problem... The DVD is busted/hard to read/borked/iffy.

or

2. PC problem... drivers, etc.

or

3. Drive problem... not "dying" drives, but if they both came preinstalled in a name-brand machine, they're likely both made by the same manufacturer. I've certainly seen discs that can't read in ANY lite-on drive. Or ANY LG drive. Etc.

[Kooldino]

Try ISObuster.

Still it could be a sign of a dying drive, and just that this disk is particularly hard to read for whatever reason - although what are the odds of it happening with two drives at once?

Maybe the disk is bad?

THe disc works in other PCs.

[Kooldino]

Parnoid mode :

Have you played a "sony bmg" audio CD or similar recently? (of the notorious rootkit variety)
Or installed a starforce protected game etc.

I ripped the new 50 cent and Kanye West CDs a few weeks ago. Not sure who publishes them.

These can effect your drive operation as the install hidden drivers etc.

Also
What may be worth a shot is to boot from live cd/dvd and see if you can access the dvd drive. That will tell you if the its hardware or a software issue.

I was just about to do that with an ubuntu live CD. I'll try in a few and report back shortly.

[Kooldino]

So i just tried booting off of ubuntu and a kubuntu 7.04 CDs (that I burned on that very machine yesterday) and get the following error:

-------------------
BusyBox v1.1.3 Built-in shell (ash)

/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
(initramfs) [ 97.054434] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through [97.057679] sdb: assuming drive cache: write through.

[Kooldino]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=279884

[Marshmallowman]

Well that quick test did not work

Did you do a md5 check on the image before burning and verify that it burned correctly?

Though I think you might be getting side tracked here, at this proint if it were me I would either try the drive in a different computer or just chuck it and get a new drive

[Kooldino]

Well that quick test did not work

Did you do a md5 check on the image before burning and verify that it burned correctly?

The discs pass the "self test" when another machine boots them.

Though I think you might be getting side tracked here, at this proint if it were me I would either try the drive in a different computer or just chuck it and get a new drive

I may try it in a diff PC.

[Evildead666]

I've got a couple of DVD drives which won't read any 'real' dvd's anymore, just dvdr and rw.
My last dvd/divx player for the tv went that way too...

Never changed region code, so isn't that...

It just seems to happen...

[Wombat]

Yeah, sounds like the drive is just going. Maybe the optical table is out of calibration, or you could be lucky and just need to run a lens cleaner. Either of those things can explain why certain wavelengths, or substrate depths, could work, while others don't.

[Kooldino]

So get this...I turned off the machine for a couple of days. Booted it back up, used it for a few hours as normal. I had left the DVD in the drive.

I eventually went to "My Computer", and noticed that the label and icon for the drive changed to reflect the contents of the DVD. I installed the program, and it all worked fine.

WTF?

[Elie]

I think it's going to crap out on you again, if it happened once it'll happen again until it dies.

I still recommend a new burner, they are only $30

[Kooldino]

I think it's going to crap out on you again, if it happened once it'll happen again until it dies.

I still recommend a new burner, they are only $30

Again, this is a work computer and it's more complicated than just ordering up a part.

[Tjalfe]

Is there no way of trying a known good drive in the computer to verify the problem?

[Kooldino]

Well, part of the "problem" is that it works fine now. *shrugs*

But I could hypothetically do that, if one of my co workers didn't mind me ripping out his drive for a little bit.