CD-RW OK - DVD broke

I've a ten month old Sony Z1RMP laptop - works great but, today, I've found it won't read DVDs. I don't use DVDs often in it and I reckon it must be 6 months since I last used one (and it worked OK then). It's a combined DVD/CD-RW drive.

Today, I put a DVD (data one) into the drive and, after a few flashes of the drive light - nothing! The drive didn't spin up to try to read it. Put in a CD and it's fine - even writes OK. Just won't recognise there's a disk in the drive if it's a DVD. I've tried 3 different DVDs and all behave the same. The DVDs work OK in my desktop, so it's not faulty disks.

I've now plugged in a portable DVD/CD-RW drive into the Firewire port and it works.

I don't want to send it back to Sony for repair as they'll reset the HD back to its delivery state (or so they say in their warranty literature) and, considering how infrequently I use DVD, it'll be more hassle restoring my C: drive than doing without DVD.

Anyone had a similar fault and found an easy fix?

 

You could try to uninstall the drive from Hardware Manager and let XP redetect it. It's a long shot that it would work but would be the first thing I'd try.

Gary

 

Hi Steve

try a cleaning disk before giving up on it, in case it's a slight dirt build up: some formats "read" easier than others. Can get similar optical drive dirt problems where data CDs won't read but audio CDs will, or where mass-produced disks read but "burnt" disks don't (better signal off "printed" optical disk than dye-based writable media)

I'm assuming that it did actually spin a bit but never got fast. Which might be wrong! But have come across this sort of thing several times, and it's easy to try.

the cleaning disks have a gaggle of small brushes (which isn't the kindest thing to do to a lens) but reputable ones aren't bad and don't cost too much

best wishes, HJ.

 

Along with Garys suggestion, if you can uninstall the DVD software (such as WINDVD or whatever Sony use?) and reinstall it, that may help the problem.
I had a similar warranty request when my Toshiba laptops MODEM stopped working. I was required to use the restore disks and restore the OS to its "shipping state" to prove that the MODEM was faulty B4 it would be looked at under warranty.
From that episode I quickly learned to use a backup programme like True Image 8.x to do regular full system backup so if I'm required to restore back to the factory settings, I can return to my updated and tweaked version in around 20 mins and avoid days of work.

 

I had an identical issue with a CD/DVD drive. It could not recognize the presence of the UDF format common to DVD movies. Final solution was re-installing the drive's firmware. If you go this route, naturally look for an updated version. For my drive, firmware version was current ... but apparently corrupted.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions:

a) I've tried uninstalling the CD/DVD drivers in Device Manager, rebooting and letting XP redetect and reinstall. All went as expected (i.e. found and no errors reported) but it didn't fix the problem.

b) I've tried a cleaning CD (which I used a while back to sort out a dodgy burner in a friend's PC).

c) Having got successful DVD reading via an external drive, I don't think the DVD software is likely to be a problem - I'll park that one for the moment.

d) Drive firmware or hardware failure seem most likely so I'll see what I can do about the firmware next. First, of course, I need to get it - off to Google...

Thanks again to all.

 

Updated drive firmware (1.01 to 1.04, so probably nothing significant, but should fix any possible corruption). The drive seems to try harder at reading a DVD but still fails - coughs and splutters for maybe 10 seconds before deciding there's nothing there and stops. I've tried a movie and 3 different data DVDs and all fail to read in the same way.

In response to Paul's suggestion, Sony supply a Vaio badged version of interVideo's WinDVD 4. I don't have any separate installation disks for it, other than whatever's on the system recovery CD. However, I don't see how that could have any bearing on a drive's ability to read from a DVD in the first place.

Reading and writing to CDs still working fine. I'm stumped. I realise that CDs and DVDs are significantly different to read from but, if the mechanism has failed with respect to DVD needs, I'd expect to also have problems writing to CD.

Maybe I'll just leave it and hope the problem goes away just as mysteriously as it arrived <s>.

Thanks for all suggestions.

 

Without working software you won't be able to read a DVD. So I won't suggest using your recovery CD to reinstall the OS, but this may need to be done to prove the point unless you can install another drive to rule out a hardware fault. ZThe update from 1.01 to 1.04 could be significant in that most of these updates are to make the drive compatible with different media. But yours won't be that sort of problem. Have you tried using recent (current) versions of Windows media player (9 or 10) or Real player (10 or 10.5) to read DVD's. The WinDVD software will still be required, but these other players can be used as the front end. If either of those works then this would point to a problem with WinDVD 4.0.

Check Sony's Laptop website for updates to WinDVD.

 

If you have a look in the WinDVD 4 folder, there may possibly be a setup executable for it, some programs include them.

I would agree that the software may be the cause, because they tend to try and take control of the functions. My daughter's CD-RW stopped burning CDs even after I reinstalled Nero (twice, different versions). I got her a simple (free) burning program from www.cnet.com and it works fine and she is happy and it saves me having to reformat Windows.

See if there are any free DVD programs around (make sure they have an uninstall program, just in case).

Matt

 

Paul,

I've already tried another DVD drive - a Freecom DVD/CD-RW - via Firewire and it works fine. Also, it's not a failure to play DVD movies that's a problem - as far as I'm aware, WMP or WinDVD don't come into use trying to read a data DVD. WMP is fully patched at v9 and manages music CDs fine, and nothing with a movie DVD - but then, the drive doesn't see the disk so I don't see how WMP could.

I'm reluctant to play around with uninstalling, reinstalling and repatching programs at will as that, in my experience, easily leads to other problems.

I still think it's hardware (or firmware at best). Perhaps somebody here can explain (or point to a URL) that explains the differences in reading CDs and DVDs - which part of the drive is not working?

Mattman: No install file in the WinDVD4 folder.

Thanks again.

 

CD/DVD information:
http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/sam/odfaq.htm

Matt