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Hi my dvd/cd drive can't play dvd's

HI guys
I can't play DVDs or burn DVDs on my drive.
I'm having laptop asus A6000U and is running XP.
In device manager under DVD/CD-ROM drivers (I have)
-Generic DVD-ROM SCSI Cdrom device (I don't know what that is )
-TSST crop CD/DVDW TS-L632C (that is the right one)
I try to uninstall both of them ,but they install them self automatically back on!(when I scan for hardware hangs) in cmd Ive type chkdsk/f but nothing hangs!
In the My COMPUTER DVD-RAM drive (E) and DVD drive (F) but I have only one DVD/cd driver in my laptop.
when I put in drive DVD-RW my laptop cant see the cd! And when I put movie DVD laptop see movie on drive E and double click opens with window media player and I got the message Win media player cannot play DVD because DVD decoder is not installed on ur computer ! I try to install MPEG-2 codec but no changes!
can somebody know what is going on??

Aaog

hey. I can tell you about part of that right away. Playing DVDs is a matter of having DVD software installed along with your DVD drive. Windows Meida Player can play DVDs, but not unless you have other DVD playing software already. This is because playing DVDs costs royalties to the company owning the format. Licensing stuff. When Windows Media Player tells you it doesn't have the correct codec, that's what it means. Some of the most common DVD playing software is WinDVD and PowerDVD. These companies also sell jsut the decoder itself without the application, and that might be cheaper, not sure.
This article has steps to install the codec: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman02april15.mspx

There are "free" ways to get the decoder too but I'm not sure if any of them are entirely legal.

As for the DVD drive issue, that's more complicated. It is very unusual to have a drive recognized twice like that. If it is your drive recognized twice, that is. It seems like the disc is going into your correct drive letter (the DVD-RAM drive), when you put a disc in. You have no reason there might be another drive at all? no docking station, virtual drive utilities?

Also, what software are you using to burn DVDs or are you trying to do that through Windows itself?

rid

Test your optical drive by trying to boot from a bootable DVD. If that works, the unit is OK for reading.

Make sure you haven't got some sort of burner software installed that autostarts a process that "watches" the optical drive (some do and that can mess things up severely). Kill any processes that is related to such software (e.g. Nero).

Look through the device manager in safe mode. Is the duplicate optical unit still there?

For playing DVDs, you can use VLC (www.videolan.org).
/RID

drogi

ASKER

Hi
Thanks for replay, there was install demon virtual driver Ive just uninstall that but still no progress with resolving my problem.
no nero or any other program relaiting to dvd driver are installd
any other idea ?
thanks

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Aaog

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drogi

ASKER

ok
so..., I've install small program asusdvd and I can now watch DVD movies :))
I erased a demon virtual cd and install Nero original software
So now I can watch movies and burn cd's ,but burning cd/dvd is only available under Nero ,and one more interesting stuff when I put DVD in my DVD drive ,driver cant see cd/dvd is 0 free space and 0total space hmmmm any idea?

Aaog

Is this problem with blank DVDs only or with videos and programs discs too? What happened with the second DVD drive....is that still showing up?

drogi

ASKER

hi
no the second driver is gone, maybe is DVD/rw fault Ill buy different set of DVD/r
thanks