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Comments for Why will my DVD/CD drive play DVDs but nothing else? Average Rating Click here to add your own comments

Jul 16, 2011 Rating DVD/CD will not reconize a CD disk by: Support Hello Liz, First let me suggest you clean the drive, although it was closed for a long time dust will still get inside the drive and settle on the laser. (It looks like a very small magnifying glass) First with the drive tray open use canned air to blow out the dust inside the drive, I ususally use enough so that I don't see any particles coming out the drive tray opening. Next using a cotton swab (Qtip) and Isopropol Alcohol (use Isopropol becaus is does not contain any oils) and gently wipe the laser lense. Last step is to check your CD's, are they dirty or scratched? Scraches and finger prints will stop the cd from being read. Do you get any errors when a cd (Music or data) cd is inserted? If cleaning the laser doesn't make any differance then the drive is failing, CD/DVD drives are not repairable at a reasonable cost. Hope this helps ... Find more tutorials for hardware troubleshooting steps and checklists here.

Jul 17, 2011 Rating Why will my DVD/CD drive play dvd but nothing else by: Joe Hi Monte & Liz .Adding to Monte's Suggestions: Question is this a DVD Burner, and if so have you tried to burn a blank CD Or DVD: If you can burn CDs or DVD then the CDs you are trying to read may be faulty or have the wrong format on them. There are some Audio CDs (actually marked Audio CDs) that are different from the normal run of the mill CDs. The CDs could have been recorded at a very high speed and your drive may be a slow reader. Also (without getting to technical) there is a difference in the Lazer reading and writing angle in a CD compared to a DVD and this may be a problem. Finally try your Drive in another computer or borrow a working drive and try it in your computer as there may be a problem with your system registry. Hope this helps good luck. Have a good Day Joe.

Jul 17, 2011 Rating Why will my DVD/CD drive play DVDs but nothing else? Read more: http://www.diy-computer-repair.com/why-will-my-dvdcd-drive-play-dvds-but-nothing-else-comment-form.html by: Joe Hi again Monte & Liz. Just realised it is a burner so first try a burn. Next I asume it is a IDE drive so set it for a Master using the jumper at the rear. Plug the ribbon cable into the second IDE channel and Try all functions again. If you have more than one Disk drive then start with the drive you are having problems with, "ie" remove cables from other drives. Configuration should be, 1st IDE HDD set to "Master" HDD installed in IDE ch1 only, no slave installed. 2nd IDE DVD/CD set to Master, no slave installed. Another set up you could try is as previous but set HDD & DVD/CD to cable select, note: when using cable select all drives must be set to cable select. A final compatability check to see if the type of HDD & DVD/CD being in the same system are causing a problem is to try a boot disk in the drive while the sytem is running and see if the drive will read it. If it does not then shut down your system unplug your HDD make sure your BIOS is set 1st boot DVD/CD then try to boot from the DVD/CD drive if you are sucessfull then you will have to change either the DVD/CD or the HDD (DVD/CD would be cheaper). I have had problems where a mixture of drive manufacturers have caused the type of problem you are experiencing. Good luck & have a good day. Joe

Jul 17, 2011 Rating Thanks! by: Liz Hello Liz again, thanks for all your suggestions. I tried cleaning and a few other things, but in the end I took the easy way out and just swapped the drive for another one from another old computer :P This one works fine. I will still attempt to revive the old one, so your lovely answers are not in vain! Also its a problem that I could not find answered on the net after hours of searching so hopefully they will help others. Excellent site you've got here! Thanks again, Liz

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