New HD - cd rom working/dvd not

New here so please bare w/ me. My son had a emachine laptop in Iraq for 2 yrs and the heat finally fried HD. I replaced HD last night. I reloaded Windows XP and did all of the updates. I can play music on Windows media , but the dvd will not play movies. It keeps complaining about disc needing to be formatted. Went to e-machine support and they are saying I need to load Power DVD software ? The dvd / rom is a Toshiba SD R2312 can I just load drivers from their website ?? I have had no luck w/ that, so any help will be truly appreciated. :major

 

will the drive read any cd or dvd? If not, you can try to take it out and put it back in, and perhaps look for a firmware update for the drive. If you still have no luck, the drive could be dead too (or the motherboard could be damaged)

 

This is a really strange thing. It reads cd's just fine , but does not recognize the drive when a dvd is put in place. I am going to try and load a game and see if I can put it through the gammitt so to speak. Thanks for the reply.

 

I have a dvd drive on my computer but I needed the DVD software to make it work(i installed Power DVD software myself), I don’t think you can download it. Its something that either comes pre-loaded or you need to go out and buy the software. I hope it came with the disk, that way you can just install the software instead of having to buy some.

do you have the power dvd software to load onto windows? If you dont have it, you may need to buy new software.

The drive wont work without the software.

 

I'm going to have to disagree, a drive is a drive and should work universally. Playing DVD video is a different picture, since Windows didnt natively support DVD decoding in Windows Media Player (i believe the newer versions do). Before WMP 10, a different dvd capable software like PowerDVD (and plenty of other free ones) were required to watch DVD movies.

Back on topic, it is fully possible that the DVD laser is malfunctioning, but the CD laser is still working. Worth some tests since laptop drives are more expensive, but its still not a lot for a new one.

 

: Ok - I am not sure if this has anything to do with my current problem,but I found that when I loaded the new HD ..... I guess I did not partition it for a (E drive ( dvd ) Went to my other computer and it has in the computer Mgt. section a basic drive of (D) & (C) and has the hard drive partitioned. Then the cd-Rom / DVD is on the (E drive. I looked @ all of this and it seemed fairly simple to partition, but I would feel better if somebody that has actually done this radical move . . . . well can ya' give me ahint on how in xp home to do such a thing. I really believe this is what is wrong or maybe it is just wishful thinking. Thanks !

 

I didnt mean the drive wouldnt work period. I meant it wouldnt play a dvd (guess i should have been more clear, sorry). I just bought a brand new pc and I still needed to load the software or my dvd's wouldnt play (and i had wmp 11 and all of the codecs).

I was just saying if the company(emachine) says that its a software issue... then maybe its just a software issue imo. I still think you should load the software and see if thats the problem

 

Yep !! Ordered Power DVD Yesterday. Thank each of you for your help. I won't know for a few days so we'll see confused