liteon dvd drive not playing audio cds

just installed a liteon sohd-167t (bundled with powerdvd) for use as audio extraction on a friends pc (win98). rips cda fine, but winamp recognises cd tracks but will not play them and cd player fails to recognize the drive as even having cd in it. replace it with old cd rom drives (2) and all works fine.
tried another identical dvd and same result.they work fine in my pc, but i'm running xp.
any suggestions greatly apprecited.

 

Hello Digitalis

Did you go and see if there were any driver updates?

 

I've just been through all that. First, my 3 year old LiteOn DVD-ROM began to show your same symptoms. Forum lurking showed me that those symptoms prescribe purchasing a new unit. The drive is failing. So, I got the same drive you just got and all is well. Now, my old TDK Velo-cdwriter 161040x is suddenly not able to complete installing programs from cd's (although it plays and burns fine). I just ordered the latest LiteOn cdrw, as I don't believe my IDE line is at fault. (The same line is used for the DVD-ROM, and that installs programs and plays fine.)

Hardware wears out over time. It's hot in that PC! I would suggest that your new drive is toast out of the box, so get an RMA from LiteOn or whichever retailer you bought it from. Just exchange it. It's a great model. You just got a bad unit.

Dennis