DVD drive on PC locking up

[Scott Coffelt]

When I upgraded my Dell from WindowsME to XP last year, for some reason the DVD drive never seemed to work after that. It opens up, spins and then does nothing. I reloaded WinDVD again with no luck, I also have RealPlayer loaded, which is suppose to be able and read DVD's. Again, no luck it cycles and then locks. It takes several attempts to crtl-alt-delete the program for it to finally close out, if not just hard booting.

I really would like to buy a DVD burner and copy MiniDV tapes to a DVD player, but not really wanting to do that if I can not get this drive to work. Any suggestions as to what might be the problem?

If I can not get to work, then I may just have to put a DVD burner in the Compaq I have set up for my son, though I really planned to keep his free and clear of my programs... his is a year old and mine is 4 years old. I also assume I will have to upgrade the sound card, I think the video card is fine.

[Vaughn McMillan]

Scott, have you made sure you have installed the latest WinXP drivers for that DVD drive? My personal approach would be to just drop in a new DVD burner, although your existing drive might still be fine. Much like tools, I'll use just about any flimsy excuse to buy new stuff for the computer. :)

I haven't tried the RealPlayer DVD player, but I've had problems in the past with RealPlayer and pretty much keep it off my computers. I know a lot of people use it with no problems. From your description though, I don't think that's causing the problem. I'm sure some of the other Creekers who know more about hardware will chime in with additional (and likely better) advice.

- Vaughn

[Peter Stahl]

If I can not get to work, then I may just have to put a DVD burner in the Compaq I have set up for my son, though I really planned to keep his free and clear of my programs... his is a year old and mine is 4 years old. I also assume I will have to upgrade the sound card, I think the video card is fine.

Scott,

Try the DVD Burner in your Son's PC if He has XP to see if it works. Another thing you might try is unplug the burner, uninstall the driver for it and reinstall it all over again. I'd try it in someone else's PC first and make sure you have the newest driver for it via the manufacturers web site. Burners are cheep now but not having to buy a new one is better though.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

XP home edition is buggy. Did you use the 64 bit version?

The first thing I'd do is:
I would re install the OS or let it do a self repair.
Possibly the self installer in XP simply didn't recognize the player when you installed the OS??
That can happen, and the effort won't hurt anything.

Dells are also going to have issues from time to time due to how they are built. You may have a conflict with the software.