DVDs not playing: disc drive problem or something else?

[cwelker]

I see that many problems occurr in regards to HP laptops and playing discs. I have recently encountered this problem myself.

My discs will appear when I put them in the drive and ask to be played;

I open it with Windows Media Player

It glitches for a little while, usually shows a picture or two from the movie I'm trying to play

Sometimes brings me to the menu of the disc....

But continues to glitch and refuses to play the way it usually used to.

(I've also tried to play them in HP Medias\Smart, etc. but still no go)

In terms of CDs.. I used the disc drive to put music from CDs onto my itunes. The computer wouldn't actually play the music but the music did transfer successfully onto my ipod...

What I'm getting from this is that the drive is still reading the discs, in some small way, but it can't register them enough to play them properly on the computer.

I've tried many suggestions I've found through other forums of people with similar problems but nothing has worked so far. It's been a few monhts now and I'm pretty bummed that I still can't watch my DVDs when I'm laying in bed. 

Thanks for any suggestions!

[cwelker]

Ummm okay now I have a DVD that is playing in MediaSmart but it's in slow motion with no sound...

What is this about? I can't figure out anything that can fix it.

[TheOldMan]

I do not see a mention of the model of computer or the version of Windows, so a general response would be to download VLC player: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

If that will not play it (either music or video), then there is probably a hardware failure.

Return with model of computer and Windows OS version.