I have been searching for the answer to this problem for a month now. I have posted on a few computer forums and thought I would try the DVD related sites now. I hope I can find the answer. I have two DVD-RW Drives in my computer. A NEC 2500A RW-DVD (shows as a DVD-RW in My Computer) and an LG GSA4166B (Shows as a DVD-RAM) drives. Under Properties they show as DVD/CD-ROM. I do not know if this matters but thought I would mention it. Recently a new problem has crept up. Both Drives will not recognize a couple of Commercial DVD's. This has happened with three so far. The DVD's are playable in my living room DVD player but my computer does not recognize them. The computer drives recognize and play other commercial DVDs just fine just not these. When I go into explorer, the drives show as empty. When first inserting the DVDs the drives do try to read them. They just do not show up as being in the drive at all. I had planned on reformatting my hard drive anyway so that was my first step. I zeroed out the HDD using the Manufactures tools and reinstalled Windows XP Home. I installed my DVD drives, firmware and programs and tried again. Same problem. I am totally updated my windows XP Home with Service packs, security patches, etc. They still won't play the movie DVDs. I have rented a few other DVDs that have the same problem. Not all, just a few. I also uninstalled and reinstalled under device manager as suggested on another post. And I used one of the DVD cleaner disks with the brush just in case. I am out of things to try. It is confusing that they work just fine in a stand-alone DVD player but in the drives they are not recognized. I did a search on the web and in Microsoft, a few forums, and have not come up with a solution. Others have had a similar problem but the fix was something I already covered. Any help would be appreciated. Any clues?
I will give this a try and get back to you. I tried AnyDVD because I understand this turns the computer into a DVD player to the disk. It did not work. All I can say is if this is a new copyright protection thing, I cannot be the only one experiencing this problem. I rented Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang and found the same problem. A DVD that doesn't exist. Think I can get my money back for these invisible DVDs? Me at the end of the rope thinking of wrapping it around a neck. (sigh)
I just wanted to update this post for others having a similar problem. It was not copyright protection as I feared. After reading about the BTC brand of DVD drives, I decided to purchase one. From what I understand the BTC brand, while poor quality for writing, is very good at reading very scratched and damaged DVDs. So I replaced one drive of my writers with a cheapo BTC DVD-ROM. After installing the drive, I tested the BTC drive with a working DVD movie. Then I put in one of the commercial DVDs I was having problems with. I was able to get it to show in Explorer and even though the drive kept trying to read it and was very slow, it was an improvement. At least something was happening. It took a bit of ejecting the disk, and restarting the computer but now everything is up and running fine. I am delighted. I do not know if it was the uninstalling of the drives or what; I am just happy things are working and I do not have to worry about DVDs that won’t play in my computer. And just a note, to get Windows to re-install the drivers I uninstalled both drives. Then I hooked up each drive one at a time. This was not something I did when re-installing Windows XP the first time. I do not know if this was the fix or if the BTC drive was the fix but something worked. Hope this helps anyone having problems. The drive came from Geeks.com and cost $16 plus shipping.
