DVD Drive won't read/write properly

hi guys

I have a Dell Inspiron 9300, and it came with a NEC ND-6650A DVD/CD R/RW Drive. A few months ago it stopped working properly. By this i mean if i put a dvd film it, it would detect it, but not autoplay, and if you click on it it just shows the 2 folders, audio_ts and video_ts. To open it i have to go to say WMP and open it, but it appears smaller and of lower quality. When i put in a blank cd, it doesnt detect it, same goes for blank dvds. It won't let me erase CDRWs either. So i tried looking for solutions and ended up at buying a replacement drive, it was for an Inspiron 9300 but this time it was a Sony DW-D56A. This didn't fix the problem. After further trawling through the internet i heard it may be an upper/lower filter problem. I followed the guides, deleted the filters and still no joy.

Any advice would be fantastic

Cheers

James

 

As I was reading your post, I got to the part where you said you bought a new drive and I immediately thought "I bet it didn't fix the problem; this sounds like a software problem", and sure enough..... however, you didn't mention which version of Windows you're using, so I'll assume Windows XP. Download and run the Microsoft Autoplay Repair Wizard from this link. It's for WinXP only, so if you have Vista, it won't work, and you should then take a look at this link. Good luck, and let us know what happens!
:-D

EDIT- one other thing to try with Windows XP (not with Vista) is Dial-A-Fix. Run it and select all the boxes on the right side of the main window and click "GO!". If any errors occur, make a note of them and post them here. Dial-A-Fix may appear to lock up on certain files (like initpki.dll for example) but it hasn't. Even if it looks locked up, leave it alone and it will eventually finish.

 

Hi, I tried the repair wizard and had no luck, so i ran dial a fix as you said and came up with the following errors

Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\ieset.dll is not registerable or the file is corrupted. Your version of iesetup.dll is 8.00.6001.18702. Please contact dial-a-fix@djlizard.net so that an exception can be made for your version of this file.

And the same for

Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\imgutil.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\inseng.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\mshtml.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\msrating.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\occache.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\pngfilt.dll
Error 127; C:\WINDOWS\system32\webcheck.dll

 

It appears you're running Internet Explorer 8. Dial-A-Fix doesn't support IE8 and all the error messages refer to that and are nothing to be worried about. So, if you have already gone to the Device Manager, right-clicked the drive and selected Uninstall, and restarted the PC and that didn't work, and you have re-written the Upper/Lower Filters in the registry as explained in this thread, and that didn't work, and the AutoPlay Repair tool didn't work, and DAFix didn't work, then I'm about out of ideas other than running the Dell System Diagnostic Tool, but first, check out the simple fix mentioned in this thread. It involves a minor registry edit, but as long as you don't delete the value (just change it as described), then you can always change it back if needed. Good luck!

 

Personally all I can think of at this stage is backing up all your files and reinstalling Windows, but don't do this unless you are absolutely sure that you need to.