Solved DVD Drive play music but doesn't recognize bootable DVDs

[Aguden]

I have a a DVD drive that plays music but doesn't recognize any of the bootable DVDs I have. I also have a USB Drive with a Windows 7 system on it and that isn't recognized either. With the USB drive I have been able to play or remove MP4 movie files but not boot.

What specific information can I provide? I have basically run through the tutorial on this forum with no help. Would certainly go through the process from scratch to see if I can get this fixed. I suspect it has something to do with some software program that stepped on some obscure registry setting.

 

[TVeblen]

It would be good to know what program on the DVD you are trying to boot.

Also, if you put an installation DVD in the drive does the installation start?

How are you trying to boot these devices?

• Does the Alienware PC have a key to press to bring up the Boot Menu?
• What is the Boot Order in your BIOS/UEFI?

Let's start there.

 

[Aguden]

Thanks for your reply. I am getting a bad feeling about the drive. Between the time of my original post and your reply, the drive now fails to read music CDs. I had put one in that evidently had a crack and the drive ate it. Maybe I have now damaged the drive.

Thought - maybe before we do any further testing, I ought to replace the drive. I can purchase a new drive and then physically remove the old one and put in the new one. Is there and set of steps you recommend to remove and then add the drive to maybe get the old registry entries out of the picture? Maybe CCleaner after the removal? Disk Management? Thoughts?

 

[Layback Bear]

Don't worry about your registry.
Turn off the computer and unplug it from the wall socket.
remove the old DVD drive and install the new DVD drive.
Plug everything in and boot the computer.

 

[TVeblen]

No, there is no need for any of that.
Turn off the computer, disconnect the power cable, remove the old drive, install the new drive, reconnect power, and turn on.

Optical drives are very simple devices, use generic drivers, and replace easily.

EDIT: Layback Bear types faster than me. No fair! But, what he said!

 

[Aguden]

Thank you for your help. The replacement DVD RW drive went in as per your instructions and I have tested it with a music CD and a Win 7 distribution and all works as advertised. I then did a restore point but that won't be good for long! At least it feels good!

My goal when I started was to be able to boot from the DVD drive and it looks like that will work but I haven't actually tried. So I am guessing I ought to do that. I am about 90% sure that I have the drive as the first in the boot list and I should be able to check that by using f12 on a boot. The other advise I'd really want to figure out is what would the best way to go to have the correct distributions. There seem to be the Dell Alienware distributions, a system recovery pair of discs, a system repair disk, a windows 7 repair disc (maybe the same as the one before), an Arconis bootable media, a special recovery disc, an AISBackup special recovery disc, etc!

I would like to really have a better plan in place for when there are problems. If you think I ought to post a new thread, fine. or maybe you can point me to a tutorial but most of them seem to tell you how to do a particular but I haven't found an over view to make the decision on which of the many restore/repair options to use.

Again thank you for your help. A much easier soultion than I'd expected.

 

[TVeblen]

Glad it worked for you. I would test the boot function right away if it were me!

What do you mean by "correct distributions"?

 

[Aguden]

Reboot works fine.

What I meant by "correct distribution" was which is the best type to get a screwed up system back working, how to create it and how often to update it.

I could start with a distribution from the manufacturer and do a clean install. The I have to restore all prigrams and all windows updates.

Then there are a few other flavors:

1. System Recovery

2.System Repair

3. Special Recovery

4. A few specific to other backup software packages - Arconis and AIS Backup.

I'm trying to get a plan in place soo I know what I need to do in case of problems. The use of the distribution seems to require starting from scratch and some of the others don't but none of that is clear.

Again. I can post this as a new thread and mark this answered if you think that's best.

 

[TVeblen]

You will get more opinions, and certainly a list of everyone's favorite software, if you post a new thread.

But for what it's worth, here's mine:

First, everyone should have either a Windows 7 installation DVD or a Windows 7 Repair Disk.
This is necessary to perform basic recovery and system repair procedures that don't require more extreme measures.

Second, everyone should have a system backup plan. For many this involves taking Images of the system drives using software like Acronis True Image, or equal. These programs take a "snapshot" of the system drives as they are at that moment. These snapshots can be restored if you were faced with a unrecoverable failure of any kind.
I take an image about once a month. Some people do it much more often, others longer. It is a personal decision based on how much your system changes (how many changes you make) and how often. There will be many more opinions on this.

Third: Backup, backup, backup! Everyone should have an extra drive, external drive, or cloud storage drive to keep backups of all important user files and data.
Images are for the system and these are compressed files. Backups are for your personal stuff and it's more convenient to have these as whole files IMHO.
If it's not backed up it's (obviously) not important.

Everything else is user preference.

A Windows 7 Installation DVD or ISO image is useful in case you ever wanted to perform a Clean Installation on your system. There are a few reasons why people would want to do this.

System Recovery Disks from the PC manufacturer are useful in restoring the computer to the condition it was in when it came "'out of the box". You might want to do this if you were selling a laptop.
But it seems less than helpful in recovering from a catastrophic event. A system image would work so much better.

Alienware Disk probably contains drivers and utilities that came with the system. You may or may not want to reinstall these if you did a clean install of Windows. But it is better in that case to download the most recent drivers for your system. The drivers on that disk will most likely be way out of date by the time you need them.
Many of the utilities that get installed on these systems are just resource hogs anyway. You can get by without most of them. There are usually better utilities built into Windows or available for free on the net.

Hope that helps.

 

[Aguden]

Thank you for your help. I will use your advise above to start my recovery plan and then post questions for where I have holes. I have a super backup scheme and watch it carefully to assure that it always runs correctly. Very mature and runs great with duplicate in site (office and extreme far end of the house) and some cloud storage.

Take care.