New NEC DVD RW installed but not working properly!

321Driver

Hi Guys,

Great forum loads of info but I am still in a spin over my newly installed NEC AD 5170 A DVD RW drive. I replaced a CD ROM drive to try and bring my PC up in the world and it correctly appears as a DVD RW drive. It even shows me the titles of discs I put into it but none of them will play, thats DVDs, CDs and CD ROMs and using Windows Media Player on XP Pro. It is in the master position to a CD RW drive that I fitted a couple of years ago. That installation was very staight forward on W98 and so I am confused as to why it is all proving so difficult this time around with a DVD drive on XP? If anyone can give me a steer or anything to try it would be much appreciated.

btspm

What do you mean by "none of them will play"? Can you view the files in Windows Explorer? When you try to open them in a media player is there an error message? Crash to desktop? BSOD? If you can see the disc volume label than the drive is at least recognizing the discs.

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Help! Help! I'm being repressed!

321Driver

btspm. Thanks for your reply. I can view the files in Windows Explorer it tells me what the disc is calld etc and I can open the folders to see the files but when I try to open them in Windows media player there is an error message or nothing happens. With CDs it lists all the tracks but can't play them and gives me a message that the lense/disc may be dirty or the drive is bust. With DVDs the media player doesn't even list the title. With CD ROMs the files don't even appear in Windows explorer although it recognises the disc as a CD ROM but has no title for the disc. From reading the forum I am trying to think if it could be a hardware issue or a software issue. The drive is physically working but I think there is something from stopping it from displaying the data correctly? The DVD drive came with no software etc but I didn't think that was a problem with XP? Any guidance on what to check would be a great help.

jc836

Looks like you have a bad drive. If you go into Device Manager the drive will be listed there. If there is NO "!" beside it then it is being recognized by XP. We will assume that you have updated to SP2 with ALL current updates. Another thing-the cable should be an 80 conductor (80 tiny wires) ribbon cable. You state that there is an error message concerning the lens and that is what inclines me to think that the drive is DOA. Many of us do not use Windows Media Player, but it should work. Make sure you have V10 of it installed.
Just my 2 cents-good luck

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Oldtime Recording Engineer-retired.