Hello all. I'm not very computer savy so please bare with me. I have the Sony DVD RW DW-U14A (Type: DVD/CD-Rom) in my computer. I have never had any problem up until now. I went to play one of my kids DVD's on the computer and it would not play. (She has played this DVD countless times on the computer) When the DVD is place into the tray, the tray closes and the orange light appears (steady). After about one and a half minutes the light goes off and nothing. Usually when I insert a Movie into the drive my "Power DVD" program automatically starts up. This does not happen. When I open "Power DVD" manually and select play, an information box comes up saying, "No disc in drive E:" When I look in My Computer - DVD-RW Drive (E, it shows nothing. The interesting this is though, I can play and record CD's, Picture on the drive, but no DVD's. I have tried countless other DVD movies that we have played on this drive and they dont work either. The Sony DVD drive came with the computer, and I'm not sure if we have the software (disc) that came with it to try and reload. My system is running MS Windows XP Professional, Version 2002, Service Pack 2 The computer is Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz 2.79 GHz, 512 MB of RAM Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Global
The orange light usually means dead drive or problem with drive. Have you tried updating the firmware http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_firmware.php?download_id=1618 The latest f/w is 2.0e.
Thank you Mort81 for replying to my question. Could I trouble you with another question? Is updating the firmware an easy process? As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm not the most computer savy and I'm a little concerned by the disclaimer on the "Firmware Page" These pages are only for advanced users. Bad flashing could destroy your drive definitively. Read carefully the installation notes of your firmware before you upgrade. The Firmware Page and the drive manufacturer can't be responsable on REMEMBER: This is at your own risk!!!! Thanks in advance for your help.
Yes it is. F/w is instructions for for an optical drive that tells it how to read and write media. As new brands and speed of media come out the f/w needs to be updated to keep up. There is a very slight chance that it could damage your drive but as long as you make sure there is no disc in the drive while flashing, you don't power down or loose power to you pc while flashing, and you select the correct drive to flash you shouldn't have any problems. Optical drives almost have to be flashed with updated f/w as older generations of media become obsolete. I flash both my drives with updated f/w as soon as it becomes becomes available. I can't guarantee it will fix your problem but it is worth a try and what do you have to loose. Feel free to post a question about updating f/w if you need some reassurance. It won't bother me, really. It may not take since it sounds like you already have problems. You do so at your own risk but I would. You could post your problem here http://club.cdfreaks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=61 They have sub forums dedicated to different brands of optical drives. Good luck. Mort
