For the past few weeks, I have been using my husband's lovely computer at work, which has a fast internet connection and a disc burner, to quickly download .zip files (of .avi files) and then burn them onto a CD-R. I have then, successfully brought the disc home, inserted the CD-R into my non-burning, not very fancy Windows ME, Dell Inspiron 4000 laptop, and drag and drop the .zip files onto my hard drive and then unzip them, and watch the .avi files. Two days ago, I opened up a DVD+R disc that someone had sent to me with video files on it. It works well--no problems there. BUT! Now when I try open up those CD-R discs, my disc drive won't even recognize that there's a disc in there at all. It just whirs and clicks in abortive bursts and then gives up, or tells me to insert a disc, when there of course already IS one in there. Has something gone TERRIBLY wrong with my computer, or is this a common problem of software being unable to cope juggling between two different kinds of dics? IS there anything I can do? Is there a driver update that could save me? Do I need new software, or is this a real hardware, I'm up the creek kind of situation? I am not a computer savvy person, but as long as I can wade through the unfamiliar jargon, I can usually figure things out. Please someone help me? Just reading back posts on this site has helped me figure out MANY problems in the past, but this particular one was not in the backlogs. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. --Iris
In addition... I decided to run some experiments. I tried to open up .avi files that I have on my hard drive that worked a few days ago. They failed to open audio or video on the Windows Media Player, and opened video only on Quicktime. I don't know much about these things, but I suspect that a driver is fried? How do I figure out which one, and replace/update it? Does this sound like I'm on the right track? HELP????
and furthermore... This is such a wonderful, helpful site. I went into the software section and looked up video player software, and it seemed that the Media Player Classic would be a good one for this Windows ME platform I'm using on my laptop, so I downloaded it and now the .avi files on my hard drive are working again. Now I just have to get the computer to recognize those CD-Rs again. This site is fantastic. This is the third time that I've been able to use it as a resource to educate myself and then find the downloads or links I needed to make things work properly on my computer. But, I do still need help with gaining access to those CD-R discs that are no longer visible to my disc drive. I'll keep looking around in here, but if anyone knows something, please tell me. --iris
