STRANGE my msi dvd player wont play dvds

i have a msi +-r/rw dr-8a dvd writer. i wanted to use it to watch dvd as my stand alone dvd player stopped working. the msi dvd player wont play any dvd movie discs. it just keeps telling me that the drive is empty which it isnt.

i have tried unistalling the drive unpluging it and rebooting. i last played a dvd on it about a year ago and it was fine. have done all the checks for up dates from manufacture and there are no current updates.

i did update the firmware using msi live update and it updated the firmware from 150 to 160 but that was ages ago and all was fine after that.

also what i have noticed is when i open my computor the dvd drive icon changes to a cd drive icon

i have power dvd + nero+ windows media player10+ vlc and all say that the drive is empty.


surely that should not happen