DVD Drive not seeing DVDs

aspirin · 17th July 2008

Greetings!

I'm running Windows XP SP3.

I have 2 DVD drives in my computer. E: is a DVD drive, and drive Q: is a DVD-RW.

E: works fine, but Q: no longer recognizes DVDs. I can read and burn CDs on Q:, but if I put a DVD in the drive, nothing happens. If I try burning a DVD in Nero it tells me that the drive is empty even though there is a blank disc in the drive. If I put a commercial DVD in drive Q: it doesn't even spin up and show in "My Computer."

My DVD burner is a Sony DW-U12A. I have downloaded and installed the latest firmware drivers from Sony, but that didn't help.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Brian

**PeteC** · 17th July 2008

Brian

I rather suspect that the drive has failed - DVD drives contain twin laser circuitry to enable the reading/writing of CD's and DVD's - sounds like the DVD side has gone down. When a blank disk is inserted the drive reads the first track which contains info re. the type, speed, etc of the disk hence Nero sees the drive as empty as that info is not being read.

Check the cabling, but as your other drive is on the same cable and this drive handles CD's I would not suspect a problem there.