Strange problem with CDs/DVDs not being read

[Marcus21]

When I tried to play Battlefield 2 a few days ago, I put the CD into the drive and nothing happened. I checked the drive in My Computer and my drive didnt recognize that any disc was inserted. My computer also took a long time when i clicked on the drive and crashed when I attempted to right-click and explore the CD.I thought it was just a problem with the disc and I was planning on reformatting my PC anyway, so i went ahead and reformatted. However, my PC wouldn't read the windows boot disc. I found out that my NEC DVD-RW drive would read DVDs only, not any CD-ROMs. I put the drive into my roomates PC and it wouldn't read CDs in his either so I thought it was the drives problem.

I bought a new LITE-ON DVD-RW drive and reformatted on that. The reformat worked fine except that the new drive wouldn't read any of my driver discs. However, it would read burned CDs, DVDs, and audio CDs. It wouldn't read any of my game CDs or driver CDs. I rebooted my computer and tried again and now it won't read any CDs and it barely reads DVDs. My Computer keeps giving 'Not Responding' messages when trying to access the DVD.

So, now I have no idea what is causing this problem. It can't be a virus or anything as the only thing on my computer is Windows XP and a few drivers. The only thing I can think of is that the motherboard is the problem but I can't figure out why it still reads certain types of media but not others.

Help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[Marcus21]

Well, a little update here.

I've been told it's possible that this might be a PSU problem. That doesn't make too much sense though as my old DVD drive wouldn't read discs in my roomates PC either. The only explanation for that is my PSU slowly fried both of my DVD RW drives.

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Not real sure what you are asking, but you do not format a CD Reader, Burner or DISK. You format a disk to use with DIRECT CD, INCD or Drag to DISK. For COPY you use a Clean Disk. Luck, Jim

 

[Marcus21]

Sorry, I will try to be more clear.

When I said format, I meant erasing my hard drive and formatting my computer with a new copy of Windows.

The problem I am having is that my DVD burner will not read any CDs that I insert into the drive. It recognizes that a DVD is in the drive but won't run the DVD that is in the drive.

 

[Marcus21]

Anyone have any idea what the problem might be?