Computer sees DVD drive but not disk

I have a mysterious problem with my DVD drive. I bought a new Gateway Win 7 computer in April. It came with a Hitachi DVD burner on drive D (which my research has since found is not a very good drive.) Initially the drive worked but over the last two months it has generally lost the ability to recognize a disk. Gateway support led me through the usual (delete low/high filter registry entries, uninstall and let Windows reset the default driver stack, etc). Finally they suggested to take the computer back to day one (restore). I have had to solve lots of non-DVD issues (virtual XP machine, tough legacy programs to install, etc) so I do not want to go all the way to ground zero.

So, next step I pulled the DVD drive and installed two new Lite-On DVDs (I have always had good luck with Lite-On brand).

Now for the weird stuff:
Device manager finds both drives with no errors (Drive D and E). Windows Explorer finds both drives. Computer Management/Disk Management applet finds both drives. The applet description for both is DVD-online-Healthy (Primary Partition). Microsofts Automated Troubleshooting Services web program finds no errors.

Yet, I have a movie DVD in both drives. Drive D does not report a disk. When I load a movie viewing program and tell it to look in Drive D the computer reports drive empty, opens the drive and says to put a disk in the "empty drive".

Drive E on the other hand (also brand new, same driver as D) works perfectly. Plays movies, shows disk in drive, shows what portion of disk is full vs empty.

So, does anybody have an idea of why the computer sees the drive but not the disk? Fixes?

dbish said:

I have a mysterious problem with my DVD drive. I bought a new Gateway Win 7 computer in April. It came with a Hitachi DVD burner on drive D (which my research has since found is not a very good drive.) Initially the drive worked but over the last two months it has generally lost the ability to recognize a disk. Gateway support led me through the usual (delete low/high filter registry entries, uninstall and let Windows reset the default driver stack, etc). Finally they suggested to take the computer back to day one (restore). I have had to solve lots of non-DVD issues (virtual XP machine, tough legacy programs to install, etc) so I do not want to go all the way to ground zero.

So, next step I pulled the DVD drive and installed two new Lite-On DVDs (I have always had good luck with Lite-On brand).

Now for the weird stuff:
Device manager finds both drives with no errors (Drive D and E). Windows Explorer finds both drives. Computer Management/Disk Management applet finds both drives. The applet description for both is DVD-online-Healthy (Primary Partition). Microsofts Automated Troubleshooting Services web program finds no errors.

Yet, I have a movie DVD in both drives. Drive D does not report a disk. When I load a movie viewing program and tell it to look in Drive D the computer reports drive empty, opens the drive and says to put a disk in the "empty drive".

Drive E on the other hand (also brand new, same driver as D) works perfectly. Plays movies, shows disk in drive, shows what portion of disk is full vs empty.

So, does anybody have an idea of why the computer sees the drive but not the disk? Fixes?

Probably the media. were the movies burned on the old dvd player? or were they purchased. Have you tried data dvd's? have you tried in safeboot (to see if another app is conflicting).?

Let us know

Ken

Reply to thefabe: Your idea makes sense except that these are the exact symptoms that the now discarded Hitachi drive encountered. I think it is not a drive question but a software/setting problem.

Reply to zigzag3143: The media I am using to test are purchased pre-recorded DVDs (NCIS first season).

Interestingly, I had not tried safe mode. I went into safe mode and I saw disks in both drives. Good! I then restarted Windows normal way and now see the disks in both drives.

Can simply going into safe mode reset programs/settings? I had been trying out several freeware DVD player programs and MP3 management/players programs and have uninstalled several that I did not like. Could a poorly written program (long since discarded) cause the error and the going into safe mode reset the problematic setting?

I will keep playing with this but so far so good!

P.S. to both thefabe and zigzag3143 - great graphic photos for your online personas!

I want to restart this thread. I thought the problem was fixed but find that it is still here. In all my discussion here a disk is a commercially recorded movie DVD.

My description of my problem is that my Drive D does not find a disk in the drive when I insert the disk into a running computer. If I do not explore the disk with Windows Explorer but merely look at all the drives the icon next to Drive D changes to show the disk is inserted. Sometimes (not every time) Windows will pop up a Windows Explorer folder with the drives contents.

Regardless of whether this happens or not when I explore the disk with Windows Explorer or try to use a multimedia app I get a windows box that says please insert disk and the disk in Drive D is ejected. Drive E works without problem.

If, on the other hand, I insert the disk into Drive D and don't try to access it and then reboot the Drive finds the Disk on reboot and all apps (Windows Explorer or multimedia app) work fine.

I tried running the computer in safe mode and Windows Explorer finds the disk in Drive D without problem upon insertion (reboot not needed).

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

I appreciate every one's help. I created this reply to change my notification options. Please disregard.

Try this:
Your CD drive or DVD drive is missing or is not recognized by Windows or other programs
Your CD or DVD drive cannot read or write media
The CD drive or the DVD drive does not work as expected on a computer that you upgraded to Windows Vista

Thanks for the links. None helped. I ran the Mats_Run.dvd.exe
tool and it did not find any errors.

The odd thing from my perspective is that the icon next to drive D in Windows explorer shows a disk. The hardware is acknowledging its presence but "loses it" when I try to explore or use. Also, the fact that it works fine in safe mode.

I think I have finally figured out this problem (which has been driving me crazy!). I am running Windows 7 with a XP Virtual mode machine running inside to provide operations for legacy apps. I have been trying to run the multimedia apps on the Win 7 machine.

I discovered that the XP Mode virtual machine was claiming my D: drive for itself but the claim is somewhat shaky. So, sometimes the XP machine owned the drive and nothing on Win7 would find the drive (or at least be able to control the drive) - other times the Win7 apps could control the drive.

I cut the XP Virtual mode ties to the D: Drive and it now works without problem on Win7 apps. So, it was not a problem with the DVD drive but something that I had not even considered!

Thanks to everyone for there help!

Dave