I need to know why my Phillips DVD drive won't read any game discs.

Movies, music cds, burned discs (DVD and CD) all work fine, but when I place a game DVD/CD in the disc to install it, my drive struggles like it wants to read it, and then makes some nice grinding and clicking noises, then just struggles some more.

The thing I don't understand is that it worked fine YESTERDAY. I've reset my DMA mode several times, and that does nothing to fix it. I've also removed any virtual drives from my system.

Is it possible to fix this, or should I invest in an external drive?

 

Well, as a quick update, I've tested a couple of my CD-based games, and Morrowind seems to be the only one that works. Meanwhile, all of my burnt discs and movies continue to work fine.

The grinding noise seems to be to be the lens assembly struggling to move at a certain point in it's run.

*sigh*

I don't understand this at all.

 

If you are using DR-K17Y, there is a new firmware from 2 weeks ago to improve reading of disk.

 

I just did a search for that firmware, and it seems to be for a Pioneer drive.

I did find new firmware on Dell's site for my SDVD8820, but it didn't seem to help anything when I flashed the drive.

 

Another update:

It seems that Windows is only recognizing the drive as a CD-ROM, even though I can play DVD movies on it. I figure it's reading as CD only because I checked in Nero Drivespeed, and the option for DVD speed is greyed out. It also references the drivers as a standard CD-ROM drive.