DVD-Drive won't read DVDs

[Zorn]

Here's a good one. I just received a Mini Book PC, model TX-3. For the uninitiated, this is essentially a "PC" about the size of a large discman. It utilizes primarily notebook components, including the harddrive, ram and, in this case, a notebook DVD player, made by LG.

The unit does not ship with an OS, so, upon receipt, I loaded a nice fresh install of Windows XP. I also loaded PowerDVD which ships with the unit. Here's the problem and it's a weird one:

If the system is already booted into Windows XP it will not recognize any DVDs that are inserted. The DVD player will blink and try to read the disc, but ultimately, the DVD drive is reported as being empty by Windows (and, obviously, by PowerDVD). Now, here's the weird part, if I leave the DVD in the drive and reboot, the DVD is "recongized" under my computer, i.e., it displays the name of the inserted DVD. However, any attempt to play the DVD results in the system locking up for about five minutes while the DVD player attempts to read the disc. This occurs whether one uses Media Player or PowerDVD, although the later displays the following message after five minutes of reading: "Cyclic Redundancy Error" or something to that effect.

The even weirder thing is, if I remove the DVD and then immediately reinsert it, it will not be recognized at all and I have to reboot again just to recognize it.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue? I'm slowly becoming convinced it's a hardware issue with the DVD-Rom drive, but I don't have any laptops lying around with which to test the slimline drive. Oh, the player reads regular CDs just fine. The problems is only with DVDs.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Zorn]

bump...anyone?

 

[MIGhunter]

I had this problem when I installed WinXP on my home PC. Apparently the DVD decoder wasn't compatable with WinXP. See if you can find an update to the decoder. E-mail the manufacturer of the computer and the DVD rom and see if they can lead you in the right direction. Unfortunately, I never got a compatable decoder. They told me to get a new vid card or buy a new decoder, which is like $40. Never buy compaq again.

 

[Mavrick007]

According to Google, "Cyclic Redundancy Error", or CRC error, has to do with a software problem and it says to install an update or the latest version of your software, or it could be bad software.

I would say that since it reads cds fine, then it has something to do with your dvd software or you need to add a driver update or something. I see that there is a patch out for PowerDVD, which you use, so maybe you should update the software and try again, or try a different dvd and see if it's any different.

 

[Wolfsraider]

you need power dvd 2.5 or greater

to make it simpler: power dvd xp or power dvd 2000

these are the ones i upgraded to and they work the xp version 4.0 is very nice

hope this helps
mike

 

[ojai00]

I'm not really sure if laptops have UDMA mode but if your DVD drive is set in that mode, you won't be able to play DVDs. I had that same problem when I switch the channel that the drive was connected to to UDMA mode. I didn't know what the problem was until after I formatted and found out that DVD-ROM's will only run in PIO mode in XP. Check your settings in Control Panel, System, Device Manager, and the IDE/ATAPI channels. Hope this helps.

 

[Zorn]

Thanks for all the input. This is still annoying me.

I have two retail copies of Power DVD XP. Still no go.

I changed the transfer mode of my second IDE channel to PIO. Still produces the same problems.

I can't even explore DVD-Roms. Well, actually, if the DVD is installed during boot, I can access the DVD-Rom portions of a few DVDs, though VERY, VERY slowly, i.e., it takes 30 seconds to open a directory on the disk. Moreover, if I remove the disk and reinsert it, it won't be recognized at all.

After trying 30 different DVDs, I actually got the South Park Movie to run under Power DVD, though it was so slow it was unwatchable, and, of course, once I removed it and reinserted the DVD, it told me there was no disc in the drive.

Oh, and I even pulled the DVD-Rom drive, hooked it into a slimline to IDE converter and installed it in my desktop system, which is also running Windows XP -- everything worked fine. ARRRRRRGGGG!

I think I may install Windows 98 or 2000 and see if the problem is limited to XP.

Any other suggestions still much appreciated.

 

[Zorn]

Great...same problems under Windows 2000. Of the ten DVDs I've tried, it will only recognize one and it skips badly on that one.

The manufacturer assures me there are no other similar reports, so I guess I'll RMA it and see if a replacement is any better.