Problems reading DVDs

WinXP Pro SP2. Here's the deal.... my DVDRW was kind of acting up (or I thought it was) and not burning things 100% correctly all the time; it was about a 50/50 chance that a burn would be OK or a wasted disc. And it wasn't reading DVDs, so I figured it was time to get a new DVD burner. No biggie. I installed the new DVDRW, and it burns everything perfectly: CDs, DVD movies, video CDs, audio CDs, data DVDs, etc... all burn 100% perfectly. However, it will not read DVDs either, just like the old DVD burner. It doesn't matter if the DVD is a movie, or data, or whatever. But if it's a 'factory' DVD like a store-bought movie or a game on DVD, it reads fine. Burned CDs read OK; it just seems to be that burned DVDs don't read. But if I burn a movie, it plays back in my home DVD player just fine. I do have a 3rd DVDRW that I can hook up if needed, but I really don't think it's the drive, because the DVD burner before this one acted the exact same way (except it had burning problems). The first DVDRW and the one installed now are the exact same brand, so maybe that has something to do with it??? So, any ideas on why it reads factory DVDs and not burned DVDs? But burns all types of DVDs perfectly, and reads and burns all CDs perfectly?
:confused :confused :confused :confused :confused :confused

 

Oh yeah... it's an NEC/OptiArc DVDRW AD-7170A set as Master on the single IDE channel on my motherboard (the old one was the exact same model; if you're thinking this is more of a hardware problem, I don't think it is since 2 drives exhibit almost identical behavior). I don't know if this is somehow related, but Media Player Classic has been acting strange too. It came bundled with the KLite Mega Pack and worked prefect up until roughly a month ago. I removed the MPC .exe file, and that seemed to work for a few days, but it's back to acting strange; sometimes it plays video files OK, other times it plays just the audio from a video file, and sometimes it simply crashes (MPC has encountered an error....). Could the DVD problem and MPC acting up be related somehow?

 

gday dlb i will be interested in seeing a solution to this one.i have a similar problem.i have a asus dvd burner on board and i use clone dvd2 to rip and burn dvds for backup of the ones i buy ,got kids they love to wreck them.anyway i can rip and play them straight from the pc hard drive and burn them to a dvd but if i try to play the burnt dvd on the pc i get sound and no video. slap it into the dvd player at home works fine.

 

UPDATE: I went into the Device Manager, right clicked the drive and selected Uninstall and rebooted. Now, when I try to read any DVDs burned recently (in the past +/-3 weeks) I get the error you see below. All other DVDs (like ones I burned some time ago) read fine. So, I'm assuming something happened to the DVD driver and since the replacement DVDRW drive was exactly the same as the previous drive, nothing was repaired upon installing it. Call it a lesson learned. It just sucks 'cuz now I can't read about 40 or 50 DVDs that I've burned in the past month or so. But the movies and videos play on my home DVD player, but all the data discs I've burned have become coasters.

 

NOPE! I spoke too soon. Only a few of my burned discs read correctly, and most of the ones that read correctly are burned DVD movies (in standard DVD or .VOB format). So far, NO data discs will read. However, I can still burn data DVDs just fine. I'm still pretty convinced this is a software issue. But to be sure, I'm going to try a different DVDRW drive here in a few minutes and we'll see what happens.

 

gday dlb i haven't burnt any cds lately i use dvds for everything now except for music this problem i have only started since updating to sp3 don't know if this has anything to do with it ,also i have some issues with nero in regards to adding stuff to be burnt .sorry i am not meaning to highjack you thread just curious

 

@ iwunderdownunder: no problem

OK- I installed a BRAND NEW burner. It reads everything! BUT... now when I open anything -not just DVDs/CDs, but hard drive folders- that contain media files (mainly AVIs) I get "Windows Explorer has encountered an error and needs to close" so I sent the error report, and thankfully actually got some info. It turns out I do have some type of codec issue (which explains the Media Player Classic issues) with a file called atimcenc.dll. So, I'm assuming this is a chipset file since I don't have anything else by ATI in the PC. So, I guess I'll research this some more, and we'll see what happens....
:banghead

 

well as for me i will just have to live with this till chrissy i am shouting myself a new computer and i will probably only have sort out any issues then good luck

 

:celebrate :hyper :dancer
FINALLY everything is back to normal. The file atimcenc.dll was not part of my chipset software; it was a left-over from when I had an ATI video card installed almost a year ago! I Googled the file, and it turns out that it commonly crashes Windows Explorer, I just find it very odd that it would wait 10 months to rear it's ugly crashing head. Whether or not it was related to my DVD woes, I don't know, I may never know. But in case someone else runs across this problem:
The file atimcenc.dll is usually found in C:\Windows\System32 but not on my PC. I did a Windows search (including hidden/system files/folders) and found it in C:\Program Files\Common Files\ATI Technologies\Multimedia\Media Center. I simply changed the file name to atimcenc.dll.old and then also added a "-OLD" to the name of the ATI Technologies folder. So far, all is well. I'll be able to sleep tonight.

(now I have a question about VLC Media Player, but I'll start another thread)

 

Actually, the first burner I think is faulty, but now that everything is totally normal I should probably hook it up and see how it goes, just to know for sure if it is indeed a bad drive. I really don't have a need for an external burner, but maybe one of my friends can use one. I tend to stockpile extra components for situations like the one I went thru yesterday. Troubleshooting is MUCH more productive with extra parts laying around!