really strange issue with vista/explorer and dvdrw drive

i bought a acer aspire 3050 notebook with vista home basic pre installed on it and after i put in a couple of gigs of ram into it it has been running really stable and i was really happy with it.....

untill....

all of a sudden i am unable to access avi files from the dvdrw drive!
thats it - explorer crashes (vista sais that explorer has stopped working)

at first i thought my dvdrw drive has died.... but its not the case - it plays dvd movies just fine.

so then i though that for some reason i cannot access any data through the dvdrw drive - but again its not the case as i am able to access my photos shich are backed up on dvdr's.

for some reason its ONLY when i put in a dvd-r that has a avi files on it....
when auto detect asks me if i want to open the folder and i say yes, explorer crashes.

i tried going through various players (VLC, MPC, WMP, etc....) and all of them the same thing happens.
i also uninstalled all those players (along with other programs that i installed recently like dvd decrypter, nero, dvd shrink) and re installed just the players but unfortunately the same thing keeps happening.....

its driving me crazy
please help!

 

See if you can access them without opening up explorer when prompted by Autoplay dialog. Open up VLC , Media Player Classic or whatever media player you have (maybe except Windows media Player) , then browse to the DVDRW from File > Open menu of the player.

Also under Windows Explorer > Tools > Folder Options > View (Tab) > Tick “ Always show icons, never thumbnails” Maybe explorer is crashing while trying to generate thumbnails of the videos.

See if any of the above workaround can help.

Have you tried many different DVDRs with AVI files or only a single disk? If it is only one disk, then most probably a problem with the disk. If you have tried several disks, then are they from the same pack/brand ? Some DVDROMs are more sensitive than others and may not be able to read poorly written disks (especially no-name brands / very cheap DVDRs)

 

The above advice is great I'm going to chime in with some extras that might also help...

AVI files are very general and rarely are usually, nowadays anyways, packed with Divx or xVid content. What Divx/XVid codec do you have installed? Try uninstalling that and reinstalling (or uninstalling and seeing if the problem goes away).

The latest version of the official Divx codec is working fine here...

 

i have tried to open the files "through" the players (file/open) but same thing happens.
the problem is not disc specific (tried many discs - all crash)

these are the same disks i have been using and playing since i got the laptop; meaning that the problem happened all of a sudden. (im guessing that i installed something weird.

but i will try the "Tools > Folder Options > View (Tab) > Tick “Always show icons, never thumbnails:" as PhoenixFX suggested.

will ket you know

thanx!

 

PhoenixFX, thank you!

you hit it on the nail whe you said: "Maybe explorer is crashing while trying to generate thumbnails of the videos. "

that was it.

by the way, is there any way that i can set vista to only view icons through the DVDRW? (so that i could stil look at thumbnails when in hard-drive because that seems to be ok)

strange thing is, is that previously i was able to see thumbnails even through the DVDRW but all of a sudden i am not.

eitherway, thanx again!
at least i dont have to reinstall everything from scratch which was my last recourse