dvd: cd rom driver doesnt recognise anything is in it  

Hi

I assume I have a hardware problem with my DVD RW DRIVE (E) and will have to spend money to fix it or most likely replace it, but when i insert a cd into it i can hear the noise of what sounds like the driver trying to read the cd but thats it... nothing else happends. I have a dell M1330 XPS (5yrs old) using Vista 32bit. The drive is MATSHITA DVD +-RW UJ-857G ATA and its status is "This device is working properly." (which i certainly take issue with).

If anyone can shed any light on possible solutions I'd be greatly appreciative.

thanks
Kroq

Thanks very much for your reply.

After i posted this thread, i inserted a CD that came with my computer; it was Roxio DVD creator 9.0 or something like that. Anyway it actually fired up. A pop up box gave me two options to run/install, or to autoplay. i click install (i think it was preselected). It ran and said i needed to uninstall something related to it, so i cancelled at that point. I then inserted a tv show DVD (it has previously a long time ago), but original problem happened again. I inserted the Roxio cd again and it didnt run this time; the original problem happened again.

This also happened with a security CD that came with the computer. It ran this first time, but subsequent attempt resulted in original problem ie nothing happened. I tried with my original microsoft office suite CD and it ran, but i cancelled the install, and then the icon for the E: disappeared all together from 'My Computer'.

Anyway... i have just managed to get the icon back. When i double click the icon a small box appears with a red cross in the top left corner and it says "application not found" (It does this when i have a CD in the drive and when i dont).

If i right click on the DVD drive icon i get a list of options. The same error message appears if I select "install or run program", 'configure', and 'install'. If i click on "Open Autoplay..." the error message doesnt appears but nothing happens.

So I guess i should try the uninstall option you gave? I am a bit nervous doing this though.

Its strange that the CD's i mentioned above actually ran (and then subsequently didnt); this would suggest the drive has life in it?

Is there a way to set it to auto play (as mentioned when i right click the icon and click the "open autoplay..." option nothing happens) ?

thanks
Kroq

it updates automatically.

i have selected a media player for each type of media, in the autoplay options. I suspect that even if i hadn't the default would be "ask me" which would mean when i put a cd in the driver it shouldn't do what its currently doing, but give me a pop up asking me what i want to do.

double clicking on the E: icon, as well as selecting "open" from it, return's an error message "application not found", as do other options selected. this suggests to me something is seriously wrong with it.

thanks for your help
kroq

thanks for your help!