NEC 3550a not recognizing DVD games

[natethegreat]

Just did a fresh install of XP and was attempting to install my games back on the hard drive but my NEC burner will not even recognize Quake 4 or Oblivion when it is in the drive. To my knowledge the drive worked flawlessly before, and multiple firmware flashes did not fix the problem. I would appreciate any help, thanks.

-Nathan

 

[imported_Imp]

Have you tried reinstalling the windows DVD driver? Sometimes it gets screwed detecting the drive, may have installed the wrong one. Otherwise, that drive might be dying. I had a POS Lite-On that recognized my DVDs, then started not reading them. After a firmware flash, it read again, then it started scratching them... So, best bet is to uninstall the IDE channel completely (Secondary/Primary depending on what its hooked onto). Then let windows do the rest.

 

[natethegreat]

I had it installed on the primary, no joy after uninstalling primary ide channel and reinstalling It seems that google brings up a lot of links with "your drive is dying" in them :| This drive is 11 months old and has been barely used as I had a Sony DVD player that I was using to game on. The drive can read DVD's and cd's but it doesn't respond when I put Quake4 or Oblivion in the drive.

 

[imported_Imp]

That stinks. Well, my old 'early-gen' Hitachi DVD player read pretty much everything. I actually scavenged it from my old computer to put in my new one while i was waiting for my RMA on the crappy Lite-On (it worked great for a month). Then 1 day, I put Oblivion in, no dice so I just went ahead and put the new RMA in. So if your drive can read some DVDs, but can't read others it use to, I'd guess it's on the way to dying... My current Lite-On can't read half my movie DVDs, but I can't change the firmware thanks to their great 'checker'. That or something in your whole XP install is botched. If you feel like it, you can try a complete wipe and reinstall. It might save you $30 or an RMA.