Drive not recognizing blu ray discs

SonyNEC - Optiarc BC -5500S-01. Yep, this one goes into most Dell,HP and of course Sony laptops. See it here . It is also available as a USB external drive where this OEM drive is put into an external casing. I bought one from ebay,USA some 10 months back (delivered by the International Seller in India). This is just for the info.

Coming to the OP's problem: The bluray lense is much more sensitive and even a slight dust and dirt on it is not as well tolerated as on the DVD/CD lense. This in part may explain the differential behaviour of OP's drive.

So before trying to replace the drive, the OP should first try cleaning the lense with a CD lense cleaner. If it fails to resolve the problem, he should get more aggressive and clean the lense with a microfiber cloth repeatedly (atleast 10 times) and give up only if all these fail.

(My own experience: The new drive I got from ebay was only playing hide and seek in My Computer. Returning it to the International Seller in USA is a difficult proposition. So I did what best I could do - cleaning it as above repeatedly. I was almost giving up, when suddenly, the drive started behaving properly after about ten wipes with the microfiber cloth. The drive never disappeared in My Computer since then. I still could not say that the cleaning was responsible for that since it was a brand new one. It could be that my repeated cleaning somehow put the head in proper alignment that stuck since then.)

So when there is nothing else you can do, try this and hope for the best. Good luck.

HELP? Have been having issues with CYBERLINK power DVD 8, 11, 12.. ALL are undependable and flaky with BLU-RAY...Will play certain discs and then for non reason stops recognizing discs and problem THEN carries over into WINDOWS also. Am running Windows 7 Home Premium at 64 bit. and have no problems with the drive otherwise. Anyone out there who can help? Have also tried CYBERLINK support which kept me hanging for 10 days and then tells me to download POWERDVD 12 (11 just came out in December and bought it...BIG MISTAKE!) and see if the problem continues...Well it is exactly the same...No different...Some of the discs (blurays only) in question all load up on dedicated BLU RAY players and even played on this software before! I am at a a total loss as to what the problem is. Anyone please help!? Dennis.

Welcome to Seven Forums.

Some BDs played on Power DVD before. Now they do not. And your first thought is Power DVD is playing mischief.

So let us start here.

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Does it play the BD that didn't play on Power DVD?

If TMT5 also does not play that BD, then we can shift the blame on to the hardware rather than the software.

In that case, I would go first with what Ponmayilal has stated in her post above. Give a clean and gentle wipe to the lense and check.

The same exact problems with the same 4 discs! NONE would be recognized by that software package either...I gave up...I went and bought a SONY S580 blu ray player and all the discs are fine and play back with no problems....Me thinks the software designers for lap top blu ray drives are all connivers! ARCSOFT is even more expensive the CYBERLINK...Only reason I even used Cyberlink was because that was who the mnufacturer (SAMSUNG) of my laptop had the package for free but boy was it ever buggy in any version!

Can you please name the four BDs?

Perhaps those who have the same BDs and playing them on their computers may be able to throw some light on this.

Sometimes it could be due to the specific protection algorithms used in the BDs.

I would now suggest that you try this.

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With AnyDVDHD running in the background, try the same 4 BDs with Power DVD and TMT5. Do these play or still don't?

No need for me to do this as I really think all the software for computers with blu-ray is just not dependable...I am happy that SONY has a great product and all the software for computer playback is really faulty. Have already begun a bad mouthing campaign against CYBERLINK on their Facebook page...Their product stinks their support of it is worse.

I havew got the same laptop but with optiarc bc 5500s4
It played most of my bd but with some but not others, one even triggered amessage saying that corel has stopped working

now none will play, it does that buzzing noise then a faint clickiung noise - the laser head i presume

Try playing the same BDs with the trial version of AnyDVDHD running in te background.

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If these play then what it means is that the Corel WinDVD ( I presume you are using it) will require patches. Check their website and see whether you can update. If you have a very old version of the software player, you may not get these patches. You will be required to upgrade to the latest version.

To avoid these problems, I always have licensed version of AnyDVDHD (lifetime subscription) running in the background. Of course it costs money but instead of continually upgrading to newer versions of the software players - in the long run you will be paying much more for these upgrades of software players - this will be a onetime investment. You may continue to play the newer BDs with your old version software players.

( Individual preferences and circumstances may vary.)