Hi to all (new to website)

Ok this is a little similar to previous threads but hopefully worthy of a new thread.

I recently built a pc for my girlfriends son, mainly for school etc. The motherboard/RAM/GFX card were 2nd hand from a friend. Hard drive is new along with the case. The DVD player was originally from my mates old pc as I forgot to buy one.

Windows installed ok and everything was fine until I tried to play a DVD data disc in the DVD-rom. Windows explorer took an age to recognise it and when it finally did it wouldnt open any of the folders I'd burnt on it. I tried some CD's and DVD movies, all of which worked fine. I assumed it was because my mates old DVD-rom was unable to read the format so I headed off home and got my DVD-RW from my PC. I swapped out the DVD-rom and replaced it with my DVD-RW (which I had burnt the data DVD's on!) and tried it again, to no avail. Exactly the same thing happened, CD's and DVD films worked but not the data discs I had burnt. As an experiment I tried putting the DVD-RW back in my pc and playing the discs on that and it worked fine once again. Therefore it must be something to do with my girlfriends pc I guess.

Bios detected both DVD players fine, it is on a separate IDE cable/port to the HD and is set as master. I have played around with the IDE cables but seemed to make no difference.

Lastly just to add extra confusion to this I did at one point get the PC to read a data DVD (using my DVD-RW) just long enough to copy some small files off it. After that it wouldnt play ball any more. It is made doubly annoying because she doesnt have the internet at home yet, which means I have to download files/drivers at home and take them round there

Anyway, I digress, if anyone could help me I'd greatly appreciate it!

Hi Kilf,

Welcome to PCHF, we have a wonderful staff of techs here with a wide variety of computer experience, and I am sure that we will be able to help.

You are quite the sweetie doing this for your girlfriend's son. :kiss:

Hardware is not generally my area of expertise, however, there are a couple of questions I can see that your answers to could prove helpful for our hardware gurus while they are troubleshooting this problem.

Can you please post the OS and version you have installed on the PC?
Can you please post the make/model of the DVD player?
Have you made sure that all of the updates to the computer are done? I realize that this is difficult as your girlfriend does not have internet access, but could prove relevant.
Have you updated the codecs for the PC?
Are you using the same type of DVD for movies as data?
Have you tried burning some info onto a CD in order to test the drive's ability to recognize data files from a CD?

Look forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Ah well its not quite as charitable as it sounds as there are perks..... getting to play Championship Manager round there whilst she watches Xfactor is one ;-D

Anyway in answer to your questions!

OS is XP Pro SP2
DVD Player is Sony (cant remember make) but as I have tried two different DVD players with the same problem I suspect that they arent the bugbear here
I'll have to wait till she gets t'internet before I can do this I think, shouldnt be long!
I have installed the latest FFDShow codecs if that makes a difference?
The movie DVD's are originals, the data discs are DVD-R Verbatim datalife plus (I heard they are the best?)
I have, and it worked fine from a CD bizarrely!

I also tried uninstalling the DVD drive and letting Windows reinstall it, but no luck. I also got ahead of myself and looked on the event manager in Windows to see if there were any errors, and lo and behold there were! It was showing a CD error and the fault description was "Bad block error". Perhaps this could help one of you experts to diagnose my problem?

What is really baking my noodle over this is that I can see the contents of the disc and eventually I can access it (albeit very slowly). I even managed to copy some of the files over (slowly once again)! V frustrating!!!

Hi there Kilf

Would you be able to do the following:

• Make sure your DVD drive is set to master (jumper on the back)
• If possible run it on its own IDE cable,
• Also try to change the IDE cable with another one. (will eliminate
  cable problem)

Hi there,

I've already checked the jumper settings on the drive and it is master. It is also already on a separate IDE cable. I havent tried swapping them yet so I'll give that a go as soon as I can. Also is it possible to put them in the wrong way round? I ask because both the cables have a blue plug on them at one end and the other two plugs were grey. On a similar vein should I try and swap the IDE sockets that the DVD and HD are plugged into on the mobo?

Yes it is possible to connect it the wrong way round, just make sure that the "red" wire on the cable is facing the power connector when you plug it in.


No there would be no need to do this.