Why can't I play CDs & DVDs from my CD/DVD ROM drive any more?

Hello you lovely, lovely people.

My fairly new (December) computer has decided to screw up anything I try to play through the CD/DVD ROM drive. It started out ok, playing anything I put in it with no problems but has developed a rather nasty stutter which has got so bad I can't use it at all now. It'll play other media files (mp3s, mpegs etc.) absolutely fine, as long as they don't come from the ROM drive.

I gave it a new graphics card (Verto Ge-force fx 5500 128Mb) and a new sound card (soundblaster live 24 bit) and more RAM (now up to 512Mb) but it's still no happier.

Have tried different media players, RAM optimisers, I've checked it's running DMA and that I've got all up-to-date drivers.

If I check what's running the CPU's never above 60% and the RAM's more than half free at any time. I think this computer should be easily fast enough to perform an action as simple as playing a CD. But here's the thing: if I take down the video acceleration settings in media player, it goes fine for a few minutes, then starts stuttering again (less but still bad).

Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong, and also why it definitely could run disks before and has now stopped? I'd be ridiculously, almost comically grateful.

I'm running XP pro (service pack 2) with a 2.67Gb CPU, 2Gb of virtual memory. What more can I do?

 

Have you bothered to check the connections on the CD-Rom? Is your CD-Rom slaved to another device or is the master on the 2d IDE connections?

Did you put together your system?

 

do you have a known working drive that you could swap in to test if that works?

 

Re: Have you bothered to check the connections on the CD-Rom? Is your CD-Rom slaved to another device or is the master on the 2d IDE connections?

Did you put together your system?

No, I don't think it's slaved to anything. I haven't changed the physical connection at any point. And no, I didn't put it together myself.

Sorry to sound like a div but what can I check to make sure? I thought it sounded like a physical problem with the drive (like could I route it through some other hardware to take some load off the CPU or something?) but I don't know how it's supposed to look so I wouldn't know what to check for.

 

what's the make and model of the drive? you can find that info in everest(if you don't know) and post it here and/or goto the website and find out how the jumpers are supposed to be set

could also try uninstalling it, then rebooting via the device manager .. but if it is still under warantee you might call up the manufacturer to see if you can get a replacement

 

Did you perform the installation for the hardware above? Did your CD/DVD drive start giving trouble after the upgrades?

 

Yep. Checked that. Wanted to reboot but don't have driver disks and don't trust windows to get them itself. But your second suggestion won out. As much as I'd like to fix it myself, it just is true that it's easier to get another one.

Thanks for all your suggestions, now I'll just wait a few weeks for the engineer to come!

 

try reinstalling your xp OS! they can also be a major conflict between the motherboard chipset and the chipset on your graphic card!
try codecs ex: acm6.0