DVDisfunctional

[SeTeS]

I just nabbed a couple of those 39.99 BTC 108A 8x DVD drives from Frys (mentioned in Hot Deals).

Have tried installing both but can't get either to recognize dvds.

Running Win2k. Matrox G400 max. Set drive's region code in win2k 'device mgr'.

Tried using bundled PowerDVD, Matrox DVD, and windows DVDPLAY.exe. All say that theres no disc in the drive. Tried several different DVDs. All zone 1.

Drive will read data cd's w/ no problem.

Is there something I'm overlooking here, or is it a matter of 'getting my money's worth'?

 

[Workin']

<< Set drive's region code in win2k 'device mgr'. >>

Never heard of doing that. But the chances of both drives being bad are very slim, the problem must be elsewhere, in software or the OS, but I can't think of where to start at the moment...

 

[SeTeS]

This model BTC drive has RPC-2 protection. Went into device mgr, and there's a region tab where you select the region of the drive itself. That's in addition to setting the region of the player software (e.g. powerdvd).

There might be another hd on the same ide channel as the dvd. Don't think that would make a difference tho. The dvd is set as slave and was swapped into the slot where my 52x cd was.

This is the first time I've tried a pc based dvd player. I'm not using a hardware decoder, but I assume that basic function can be achieved using a sw decoder.

 

[Workin']

Hmmm, you set it as region 1, right? (oops, I see you did) Probably a dumb question and I don't think it even matters if you are just looking at the file structure of the DVD disk in Windows Explorer.

It shouldn't make a difference whether the DVD is master or slave or on the primary or secondary IDE port. Even with no DVD decoder (hardware or software) a DVD should still show up in Windows Explorer and you should be able to see the names of the files. And since it reads data CD's it seems like the drive is physically OK. Did you try a few different DVD's? Does your BIOS correctly identify the DVD drive? Does Win2k Device Manager identify it properly? Try removing the DVD drive from Device Manager and let the machine find it again.

I'll keep thinking about it, let me know if it magically starts working or anything.

 

[SeTeS]

Well, BIOS id's it properly. As does windows. The drive shows up correctly in device mgr. It seems to function fine as a cdrom, but whenever a dvd is inserted, all the dvd players as well as explorer think that there's no disc in the drive.

Freakish. I'll probably try them in another box tonite.

 

[mastertech01]

Is the DVD drive correctly identified as the default DVD reader in the DVD software? What video card are you using?

 

[SeTeS]

Update: Slapped one of the drives into another box. Slave drive on secondary ide. Worked fine.

So, I'm assuming that it's something on my main box that isn't happy with it.

Mastertech01, the main box has a matrox g400max dual head. The second box has a Viper550. At this point, I'm not gonna bother trying to figure it out further as I'm in the process of finishing up a new system. This one is LOADED with crap and there's probably something interfering w/ the drive. Hopefully that's the case anyway. Most of the hardware in this box will be xfrd to the newer one (g400, WinTV PVR, etc.). Perhaps it will work better under a clean install of w2k.