AAARRRRRGGHHHH!!!!

[owl]

Something has happened to our DVD-RW drive. Whenever I put in an audio CD, it takes about ten minutes to load, with lots of whirring and groaning that never happened before. CDs with programs on it won't run at all. I've tried System Restore and scanning for viruses (but the subscription expired this morning, too), but nothing helps. What am I going to do??

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

Virus-wise, try AVG. I think the URL is free.grisoft.com - no subscription and I've had no problems with it. CD, you could try looking for new drivers online, uninstalling it and reinstalling it.

[owl]

I'm kind of scared to start mucking about with the drivers yet. Perhaps I should check if the useless thing is still under warranty.

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

There's a more than fair chance that the drive is physically broken unfortunately. Anyway, does it still work with DVDs? And has anyone installed any computer games or game demos on the machine recently? Some games and demos come with Starforce protection which has been known to cause issues with optical drives.

[owl]

It also skips when playing an audio CD, which tends to sway me to the 'broken' hypothesis.

Someone did install Race Driver 3 Honda Championship Demo, but that was weeks ago, and the drive was working fine until yesterday. How do you know if you have that Starforce thing?

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

That game isn't listed on the page I use to see which games have that obnoxious protection mechanism but I suppose it's still possible. This page (http://www.glop.org/starforce/detect.php) will show you how to find it and this page (http://www.glop.org/starforce/remove.php) has the removal utility if you do have Starforce on your system.

Anyway, luckily enough, DVD-RW drives are dirt cheap these days even if you end up needing a new one. You can pick one up for less than the price of a new computer game last I looked and they only seem to go down in price as time goes on.

[owl]

Thanks. I thought first of all something was wrong with the driver, but now I'm wondering whether the drive itself is broken. It's a Philips DVD+-RW DVD8631, which I've googled, and people seem to be saying it's crap. Getting a new DVDRW drive with its own driver would fix any possible problem, wouldn't it?

[crazy-vasey.livejournal.com]

DVD and CD drivers normally just use the built-in Windows drivers. But installing a new drive would almost certainly work, yes.

[merkuria-lyn.livejournal.com]

You could try a cleaning DVD. It happened to mine before and it had just got dusty and couldn't 'see' properly.

That said, I've recently had the same problem with the DVD player linked to my TV and nothing has been able to fix it so far - I suspect it's broken. :-(