Dell e1505: Won't read certain DVD's, old lappy will

Hi ya.

I recently got a Dell e1505 with:

• Win XP Media Center Edition
• 2.16 x 2 Duo Core
• 512 Ram (soon to be 2 G from aftermarket)
• 60 G 5200 RPM HDD
• 8X CD/DVD Burner (DVD +/- RW) with double layer DVD+R write capability

The problem is it wont play/read certain DVDs and my old dell lappy (inspiron 5150) plays/reads them just fine. For instance, when I throw a legal back up of "The Usual Suspects" Sony DVD-R into the drive, it crashes my entire computer and I get a blue screen warning message telling me windows has shut down. However it plays other Sony DVD-R's just fine.

Additionally, I have some data saved on a Maxell DVD-R that it wont read the disc. Once again, it will read other Maxell's disc and my old lappy reads it just fine.

Dell doesn't have a freakin' clue what the problem is and wants me to take out the disk drive and put it back it. They think it is loose or something. I don't think I buy that.

Do you have any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks

 

I would follow Dell's troubleshooting steps. Most likely they'll end up shipping you a new DVD drive.

 

when i had dvd drive trouble, they sent me a refurbished NEC drive, which ended up being worse than the one i had in there

 

This is actually the 2nd lappy they sent me. They first had 800 dead pixels: a solid vertical line.

I'll follow their steps, but it doesn't make any sense that one DVD would play fine and the other one wouldn't. I'm kind of thinking it is the OS. My old lappy had XP home and not Media.

Any more thoughts?
And thanks for the replies!

 

does it play the original DVD without any problems?

 

How are you playing the DVDs? What application are you using?

Is your OS up to date with the latest patches and fixes? Do you have any other CODECs installed?

 

We need more information as kego suggested.

Dell might have suggested to take out the dvd drive because doing this will cause your drivers to update (depending on what drive you have). Second thing, it generally isn't an OS problem. It might be a software problem, but XP does not have the capability to play DVDs, so you have to have a dvd decoder to play movies. There is a possibility that your dvd software does not support that DVD format.

 

I left them at home. I'm far away at college and thinging tend to come up missing. It is "hit or miss" any

I can't get to that point. While the CD/DVD spins up, the system crashs before I can choose a program to open the DVD.

For the one it can't read, I'm just using "Explorer".

Yes, it is fully patched. I have not installed any software on it yet, so no, no codec's

There is still the issue of the data DVD that wont get read. Explorer opens it fine in the old lappy; however the new lappy wont read it.

Any thing else?

Thanks everyone

 

Oh yea....the first laptop (the one with 800 dead pixels) that they sent me plays it DVD just fine.......it is unpatched.

go figure

 

The next time you contact Dell, explain the entire situation again, making sure to let them know the DVD player on your first laptop worked perfectly. Ask them to send a replacement DVD (if, of course, it still doesn't work after you remove the DVD as they asked you to do).

 

Tell them to send you another DVD drive, they have 3 modles and i have the nec (after calling them and gettin another one from my toshiba modle, that made too much noice and vibration, it hurt my knee if i was using it on my lap) it's a lot quiter, and also plays ALL DVD's never had a problem playing any DVD on my E1505.

 

Welcome to the world of laptop CD drives. Your better off to spend your time and money on buying a desktop and rip your DVD's. Or just get a USB DVD drive. Laptop DVD drives pretty much suck, anybrand.

 

Ask them for an NEC drive or other problems will occur with the Philips and TSSA ones.

 

I agree. If you call them up, ask for the NEC.

It could be a driver issue. Do you know what DVD drive you have? You can find this info in the device manager, and we can tell you what you need to do to update the driver.

Just a general question, have you reformatted?

 

turns out it was a driver issue. The lappy no longer crashes with I insert that DVD. However it still won't read 1 certain DVD (and neither did the first).

I will be reformatting tomorrow when I get my new HDD from newegg (and Ram)

Woo Hoo!

Thanks everyone
Cheers.