Strange problem with CD/DVD drives

WinXP Pro SP2. The PC has 2 optical drives: a DVDRW and a DVDROM/CDRW combo, both are IDE drives. The both show up in My Computer. If I put a retail DVD movie in either of the drives, the disc is 'kind of' recognized, but I cannot play the movie via My Computer: if I right click and select Autoplay or Open or Explore, either nothing happens or it responds with "Insert disc in to Drive E:". However, if I launch WinDVD, the movie plays fine. I can boot to bootable discs from either drive (I used a bootable hard drive diagnostic, a PECD, and a Windows install disc as test subjects) without any problems. This tells me the drives are mechanically OK, and that the problem is software related. The PC has Roxio installed, and I've seen Roxio cause similar problems in the past, so my first course of action is to use Revo Uninstaller to kill Roxio. But in the meantime, does anyone have any insight or ideas? If removing Roxio does NOT fix the problem, what would be next?

(Yes, I've already tried several other drives and they all behave exactly the same way; and yes, I am updating to SP3 as I type this )

 

Since you've already tried different drives not sure it this would even be relevant as I'm not sure if it's drive or OS connected. But I've seen a drive behave exactly this way before with retail movies. You know how you can change the region that the drive can read and gives you X changes. Well when I ran into it this person was out of changes, not sure why it wouldn't play movies with the correct region that was selected. This person wouldn't know how to change the region nor have a reason to so I don't know how it got changed but the solution was DVD43. Something to think about.

 

Well, it was Roxio. I used Revo to remove it, then I went to the Device Manager, right clicked on each optical drive and selected "Uninstall", then I applied Adrynaylyne's reg hack for missing CD/DVD drives (even though they weren't technically missing), then I rebooted..... BAM!!! Both drives now work perfectly. I installed Nero as a replacement for Roxio (IMO Nero is worlds better than Roxio anyhow), and we're golden.
:-D

 

Another Roxio fan has been made.:-D Man I hated that S/W!:mad

 

It's just weird that the client's PC worked fine with Roxio for over a year, then one day -out of the blue- both CD/DVD drives just quit working right. If a store-bought movie was put in, and WinDVD or PowerDVD was launched, the movie would play OK, but the drives weren't reading anything else. Strange. However, it's not surprising. I've seen Roxio have a negative impact on CD/DVD functionality many, MANY, MANY times. The old versions seem to be OK though, like Easy CD Creator 5 and earlier. It's version 6 and up that I've found to be problematic. With so many other great burning programs out there, and with many of them free, I don't know why anyone would use Roxio at all. There's plenty of free programs that will accomplish everything Roxio can do, and if you want all the functionality in a single program, then Nero has all the bases covered, and it's leagues better than Roxio in every possible way..... I'm babbling, aren't I.... :-o too much coffee this morning, not enough Baileys, Kahlua, and brandy in it! LOL

HAPPY SUPERBOWL SUNDAY EVERYONE!

GO STEELERS!

 

Roxio was great in the Adaptec days. That worked great for me and Nero never would.

Perhaps installing Power DVD created a problem. I don't think it's good to have two burning programs because conflicts start. Power DVD can burn CDs and DVDs so another burning program isn't needed.
I suspect the computer did not come with Roxio and Power DVD.

 

Yeah, the older versions of Roxio/Adaptec were great, while the older versions of Nero (v5 and earlier) were cumbersome and not really user friendly. With v6, Nero made a HUGE improvement and are now the main software included when you buy a new DVDRW drive. These free "OEM" versions of Nero 8 or 9 have limited functionality or have trial versions of some of the more advanced features (like NeroVision to create VCDs/SVCDs and Recode for encoding/ripping DVDs), but basic burning and simple music tasks (like ripping to MP3 or burning MP3 to std CDA) are free.

:-o I made a mistake.... PowerDVD was NOT on this particular PC.... it had WinDVD for playback of movies. I have no idea if it was included when the PC was purchased, but probably not. It was not the "full" Intervideo WinDVD suite which includes all sorts of other video functions like converting, editing, authoring, burning, etc. It was just the DVD playback version of WinDVD6.

 

Ah, then Nero and WinDVD can co-exist nicely.