ASUS W3J: DVD player not working

Recently, for some reason, my DVD RW+- combo drive stopped reading DVDs. It still reads CDs fine, but any DVD I put in spins around for a while, then gives up. The computer shows the drive as being present but having no disc. When I try to play a DVD in mediaplayerclassic, for example, it says "DVD directory not found."

I have tried upgrading the firmware/drivers (Windows says the drivers are already updated all the way,) installing the AsusDVD program that came with the laptop, and deleting the upper and lower filters in the registry. Nothing has worked. Any ideas?

 

Is this Vista? I know some people have had trouble with the DVD drive in Vista, and it was due to User Access Control.

Otherwise, my M6Ne drive also does this sort of thing from time to time (stop reading data DVDs) but it comes out of it after a while. I don't know the explanation but it hasn't bothered me much, when it happens I just use the V6J drive and the external HDD.

One easy way to check whether it's software or not is to boot a Linux live DVD. If it boots it's clear that the drive is reading data dvds

 

Oh, sorry I forgot to mention: it's XP.

Hopefully it will come out of it soon. I need to do a project with movie clips from a DVD, but I can't rip the clips if my DVD player's not working.

If I can find my Ubuntu DVD lying around somewhere, I'll be sure to try that. Thank you!

 

Generally this is how toshiba-samsung drives break. i dont recall the error but to date we got maybee a dozen of the same drives from ts-sam that read and write except dvd, no errors though. simply dont see a dvd. like ebe said if you cant boot from a live dvd then you need a new drive.