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Specific DVDs won't play

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Latest post 11/06/2009 07:45 PM by osprey4. 4 replies.
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Joined on 07/23/2009
Posts: 2
Points 70

Specific DVDs won't play

28 Aug 2009 03:34PM

The DVD drive in my XPS 400 will play commercial discs that I've purchased in store; it also plays discs that I've recorded, however it will no longer play rental discs, in this case, Netflix discs. The drive churns and churns, locking everything up, including the WinDVD app, and I can't even do a crtl+alt+del. The only way to stop the drive is to eject the disc, WinDVD disappears, and everything returns to normal.

Does the behavior I've described suggest anything that may be happening with the drive that I'm missing?

Some of the things I've tried or have noticed:

  • I've performed the upper and lower filters reset with no results.
  • In all cases, autoplay will start my default (WinDVD) player
  • I've reinstalled and upgraded WinDVD, but as I said, it plays some discs just fine
  • Windows Media Player doesn't recognize that there's a disc in the drive.
  • I've uninstalled Roxio, and Pinnacle Studio 9 in an effort to eliminate some possible issues.
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  • Post Points: 50

4 Replies:

South Jersey
Joined on 07/06/2001
Posts: 31,196
Points 60,192

Re: Specific DVDs won't play

28 Aug 2009 07:23PM

Hi, Karl:

It's a little hard to tell what is going on. One idea I'm pretty sure will help is to turn autoplay OFF for all DVD disc types. Then pop in one of the discs that have been causing problems and manually start up WinDVD. If you still have trouble, try VLC Media Player (link below). When installing VLC, however, do not allow the program to change any file associations. Then pop in a DVD and start the program and see if it can play.

By the way, I actually have autoplay disabled completely on my system. For one thing, I do not necessarily run the same program for a particular disc type. I might want to play it, copy it, etc. So turning autoplay off works much better for my purposes.

Please post back and let me know if you need more help. If my suggestions have helped you solve your problem, you can click Accepted Solution next to my post to tell other forum users where they can find help. Feel free to send me a PM if you like, but I will post suggestions in the forum, not by private message.

Osprey

CD/DVD FAQ

  • Post Points: 50
Joined on 07/23/2009
Posts: 2
Points 70

Re: Specific DVDs won't play

29 Aug 2009 07:17PM

At this point its a little hard to even classify the issue. Hardware? Software?  I've tried a few changes, such as turning off AutoPlay, as you suggested, but doesn't seem like the problem is there. I thought it might be too many codecs, but then why only Netflix discs, which use to play fine??

I mentioned earlier how the drive just keeps churning and churning, and either stops at some point or just keeps going. The computer won't respond to a  crtl+alt+del unless I eject the disc.   If I do a start > restart, Windows shuts down, but when it tries to start up, the dvd drive starts churning again and Windows stops loading until the disc is ejected, at which point Windows continues it boot routine.

I believe I could start to frame the issue if this was happening with all my dvds, but its only happening with Nextfilx dvds. These are the same Netflix dvds which play fine on my laptop. I called Netflix support and they claimed they had never heard of this problem. I'm a little more than dubious that I'm the only person out of a claimed 10 million subscribers that has this problem.

All of this would lead me to believe its the Netflix discs, but they play in other machines just fine, so like I said earlier, I'm not even able to classify what type of problem I'm looking at.

 I'll keep working on this as time permits. Anyway, thanks for your response

 

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Joined on 11/06/2009
Posts: 1
Points 20

Re: Specific DVDs won't play

05 Nov 2009 08:09PM

I have an XPS M1330 laptop and I have the same problem with Netflix DVDs; they used to work and now they aren't even recognized by my drive...it just spins for a while then quits.  I was hoping someone had found a solution, but I suppose no luck yet.

  • Post Points: 20
South Jersey
Joined on 07/06/2001
Posts: 31,196
Points 60,192

Re: Specific DVDs won't play

06 Nov 2009 07:45PM

Hi, Trowe:

Did you try running the Dell diagnostics on your drive? That would be the place to start. Here are the instructions.

Please post back and let me know if you need more help. If my suggestions have helped you solve your problem, you can click Accepted Solution next to my post to tell other forum users where they can find help. Feel free to send me a PM if you like, but I will post suggestions in the forum, not by private message.

Osprey

CD/DVD FAQ

  • Post Points: 5
 
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