Trouble playing DVDs on laptop

[Spamgactus]

I have had my laptop for several years now, but never tried to play DVD movies on it. I recently tried, and out of the 5 DVDs I tried only 2 of them play. One of the ones that won't play is a brand new DVD, and all 5 work in regular DVD players.

My DVD drive is a Lightscribe drive - on the movies that won't play, the drive doesn't seem to recognize the disk - when looking at it in the "computer" folder, the title remains as "DVD RW Drive (G)" instead of displaying the title of the DVD.

For the DVDs that do work, the DVD title is displayed as expected.

In an earlier post concerning this same problem with a different model,  I saw a link to a "powerful DVD software", but the name of the software was not given, and when I click the link, I'm sent to a search page in the customer service department. However, I doubt that a different DVD-playing software will fix my problem, as the drive isn't even recognizing the DVD.

Is there any advice you can give me?

Thanks,

joe

[sandytechy20 · Accepted solution]

@Spamgactus

Thanks for taking an interest in the HP Support Forums! After reading your post I see that two DVDS don’t recognize in the laptop. I would like to help you out with this issue today.

Try to Read a disc from a command prompt:

* In Windows, search for and open Command Prompt.

* Type diskpart at the command prompt and press Enter.

o If you are prompted for an Administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

* Insert a disc that contains files into the drive that is having the problem. Use a type of disc that is not being recognized in the drive. Good discs to use are game or software discs that were purchased from a store. Do not use music CDs. If the DVD drive can read CDs but not DVDs, insert a DVD movie.

* Wait about 20 seconds for the disc to achieve full spin velocity.

* Type list volume at the command prompt.

* Press the Enter key and look at the list. Under the Letter column, find and remember the drive letter next to the CD/DVD drive that contains the disc.

* Type Exit and press the Enter key to return to the command prompt.

* Make sure you type the correct drive letter for the drive that contains the disc, followed by a colon (:). For example, if the drive letter was listed as E in the diskpart list, you would type the following: E:

* Press the Enter key, and then type the following at the new command prompt: dir

* Press the Enter key. A list of files and folders should display on the screen.

Let me know how it goes.

Cheers.

[Spamgactus]

Tried looking at the disk in command prompt - it showed the usual folders found on movie DVDs (AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS), but still wasn't recognized in the Computer folder icon view. Ejected the DVD and ran diskpart, and the DVD drive didn't show up in the volume list. Inserted the DVD and tried looking at it again in command prompt and when I tried to go to the G:  drive (the DVD drive), got a drive not ready error.

I tried another DVD that I was unable to play before, and now it plays. This is obviously an intermittant problem, which to me suggests a possible hardware issue.

[sandytechy20]

@Spamgactus

Thanks for the reply.

Superb job on trying the different steps to isolate the issue.

Please contact HP Phone support for further assistance on this.

Cheers.