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DVD Drive not reading disc.

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by lukehill420

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I recently bought Morrowind and it says its a DVD-ROM compatable only.
My hard drive says it is compatable with DVD-ROMS. And despite it being a dual drive thing, there is a seperate I: Drive in My Computer, which is alledgedly my DVD Driver.
However, when I put the disc in nothing happens and thus I can't install/play it, and when I open up the D: drive there is nothing in there, despite the disc being in, and if I click the I: drive it just says I need to enter a disc.

Any idea what the problem is and how to fix it? Or is my hard drive lying to me.

40 replies

by older mycroft

[i]"My hard drive says it is compatable with DVD-ROMS"[/i]

Your HDD doesn't say it is compatible with anything - your HDD will accept inputted data NO MATTER where it comes from. Any legend for DVD will be displayed on an optical drive tray - not on a HDD.

[i]"despite it being a dual drive thing, there is a seperate I: Drive in My Computer"[/i]

'Dual Drive' refers to an optical drive's ability to handle CD and DVD format discs. It also refers to its ability to burn to +/- R,RW discs.

Many computers come pre-equipped with a Recovery Partition -a part of your HDD pre-installed with an image of your existing system, as it was when it left the factory- [u]THAT[/u] is most likely what your I: drive is.

[i]"However, when I put the disc in nothing happens and thus I can't install/play it"[/i]

Have you setup your CD/DVD drive to boot as the first unit? Your DVD should be set in your BIOS to be the first available device to boot from when the system is powered up.

[i]"when I open up the D: drive there is nothing in there, despite the disc being in"[/i]

Are you sure your D: drive [u]IS[/u] a DVD drive?

Perhaps you could post back with the specs for your system...
Make and model of computer?
Number of actual optical drives?

How many programs have you installed to date?

by w2ktechman

"'Dual Drive' refers to an optical drive's ability to handle CD and DVD format discs. It also refers to its ability to burn to +/- R,RW discs."

There are many kinds of dual drives, the most common out there are cd/dvd with cd writers. But they can also include dvd writers and dual layer dvd writers, or DVD DL.

The recovery partitions are often only available from the BIOS and not mapped in Windows. However this is not always the case.

Booting to the DVD is not the issue here. This person is trying to install a game, but seems to not be able to find the installer.

Edited to add: this is just to expand on what was previously said, not to slam or discount any information.

by w2ktechman

although I agree, from our standpoint things appear to be mis-communicated from not knowing terms. We can get by this I think though.
Let me clarify a bit before proceeding though.

First, the game is a DVD?
You insert the dvd into the dvd drive and not a CD drive?
In Windows Explorer, you see that you have multiple drives listed. 1 shows as a DVD drive?

First, open Windows explorer, then look over your drives. Right click on what you think is the dvd drive and select "Eject".
Did the correct drive open and eject the DVD?
If not, try another drive and do the same thing until you find the drive that your game is inserted into.

Then close the drive tray, wait 20 seconds, and double click on that drive letter to starrt the autorun.

If this does not help, please post back with more information, from both of the posts.

by lukehill420

First of all, I'm not going to pretend I am by any means an expect. In fact, I know very little, hence why I'm asking for help.
So I apologise for whatever mistakes I have made.

And my hard drive only has the one tray in which to insert a disc. But as I said, it is allegedly DVD compatable.
And as far as system specs go, I have no idea... the manual is at my parents house, and there isn't any brand or anything to be seen.
So I apologise for that as well.

by rob miners

and download siw.exe to the desktop. Open it and scroll down to Storage Devices. There will be a list with Type Vendor Model. If you can post a list of what is under Type it will let us know what you have.

http://tinyurl.com/233crj

by w2ktechman

just the terms are all 'out of whack' so to say, so it makes it much harder to help.
We were just trying to explain a few things to try to get in touch better. I will try harder, and just for the record, I was not trying to be rude if that is how it was taken.

Ok, some vocabulary needed for the dialogue is needed. So a few basics.

hard drive -- does not have a tray that opens. It is mounted inside of CPU and it stores your operating system (Windows) and data.

cd drive -- can read a cd disk
dvd drive -- can read a cd or dvd disk
both of these (cd and dvd drives) have a tray to insert a cd or dvd into. A cd drive will not read a dvd disc.

I: is most likely not your cd or dvd drive. Physical drives (unless changed) start at the lowest drive letters. But A and B drives are reserved, so leave them out of this mess.
Example, if you have 1 hard drive in your system, and a cd drive, the cd drive will most likely be D:. If you have multiple hard drives (count each partition (drive seperation) as a drive) then the cd drive would drop down the lettering scale. Without getting complicated though, a cd/dvd drive in any form, is usually D:, E:, F: for most peoples setups.

Now, where I was going with the 'eject' in the previous post, is it will help you to determine which drive letter has your disk. If eject does not appear, then it is not a cd/dvd drive.

Oh yeah, I also made mention of Windows Explorer. To get to explorer, double click on the "My Computer" icon.

by rob miners

at some stage you must have installed a Virtual CD/DVD, Alcohol 120% maybe. We will come back to that if need be. For a start go to this site.

http://www.drvupdate.com/

and select the link Liveupdte v1.01 and follow the instructions.

This should update the firmware for your DVD/CD.

Try loading the DVD and let us know what happens.

by w2ktechman

so the next suggestion woul dbe to double click on D: and see if it will see the disk.

If not, you may need to clean the drive, or replace the drivers.

by lukehill420

Okay, so I installed the updates, and nothing different happened.

And when I double click on the D: drive icon, the page freezes.
And yes, I have installed Alcohol 120%.

by w2ktechman

If you dont have a cleaner, try a differen disk. Put in a known good cd, and see if it is read. If it is, put in a different known good DVD and see if it is read.
if neither are found, then the drive may have an issue with it and may need to be replaced

by rob miners

Follow W2KTechmans advice but also try uninstalling Alcohol as it is known to interfere with CD/DVD drives.

by lukehill420

I deleted alcohol and nothing worked.
And I tested known CD/DVD that works, and it worked.
Its only this game that isn't working, is it because its a game and not an actual DVD?

Surely it can't be broken, considering it plays DVDs?

by rob miners

Is the game an original or is it a copy that someone gave you? If it is an original it may be damaged. Very rare though. Try getting a replacement. If it is a copy it might not have been created successfully. All in all this would have been an experience for you. I can see that you pick things up pretty quick.

by lukehill420

The game is brand new.
I got another one from the same shop, and that worked, though its a CD-ROM.

Is there an actual reason why it'd play DVDs, but not DVD-ROM games?

by rob miners

at the box that it came in. I have just realised that it was put out for XBox as well. It should say that it is PC compatible CD/DVD. If it says it is for XBox you will have to replace it.

Edit, cant spell

by lukehill420

It says 'PC DVD-ROM. Only DVD compatible'.
I think I'd have noticed if it was an Xbox game :P. No offence.

by rob miners

have you got any friends close by that you could try it on their PC? That way you will know the outcome for sure.

by w2ktechman

In the manual or on the box there should be a number to call for support with installing the product.

They may either ship you a new one, or allow you to download the game and install it with that code.

by thumbsup2

It doesn't happen often, but it's entirely possible a bad disk got loose from the manufacturer. If possible, take it back to where you purchased it and ask for a replacement. They should be able to test it for you to make sure it's no good. If their testing proves it's bad, they SHOULD replace it for you free of charge.

by lukehill420

I'll test it on one of my friends computers tomorrow, and if it fails then I'll take it back and try and get it replaced.

Another nugget of infomation - if its useful - but when I turn the PC on with the disc in the drive, it gets to a screen where all is displayed is an underscore at the top, and refuses to load anything else.

by w2ktechman

it is trying to boot to the cd/dvd drive and it actually starts and does nothing because it is not a boot disk.

Hmmm
You can disable the booting to the drive, or change the boot order in the BIOS on the system.
Why a non boot disk is not giving an error like no OS found I do not know

by rob miners

It took awhile but we got to the bottom of the problem. I think that you should give all the contributors a big thumbs up for their help. Use the program Siw.exe and look around it will help you get familiar with your PC.

You shouldn't have any problems getting the DVD replaced.

And by the way Welcome to TR.

by lukehill420

Thanks very much.
We got there the long way unfortunately.

by thumbsup2

If a system is set to boot from the DVD drive and there's not a bootable disk IN the drive, then there would not be any drivers loaded to run the drive, correct? Shouldn't it just time out at say no OS found, or not a valid system disk, or whatever it used to say when you tried booting with a floppy in the drive and it wasn't bootable?

I dunno! These new fandangled "thangs" confuse the H&$$ out of me! ;)

by w2ktechman

to troubleshoot from great distances when everyone has different time schedules..

The funniest part though, is that it took what, about 20 posts to find a bad disc....LOL.

by w2ktechman

a boot disk that was corrupt. But not a game???

At that stage, the BIOS is loading from the cd/dvd drive. When it transfers over to the boot disk is after a good chunk of the disk has loaded (like detected basic HW and boot portion of the OS)

by thumbsup2

..... an XBox/360/PS2 disk packaged in the wrong box. QA just ain't what it used to be. :(

Alas, we'll probably never know for sure.

by varunrb

Sorry if im not a help but i have da same problem........although i think this only happens for some dvds.....i bought the orange box and there are two dvd roms.....no joy though.........but thief is also a rom andit seems to read........still i wish sum techy would reply to this post so i can get whati paid for......its not the cds fault i used it in a laptop it workd.....

by varunrb

sorry i thought i was replying to the 1st post where it seemed noone had replied...........My dvd is in fine condition and reads properly on a laptop. but i cant install it there as the graphics card has too little memory.......ive used a virtual drive once it was daemon tools. Would that interfere with my drive?

by varunrb

Daemon tools was uninstalled a while ago.....i have 12 days left to return the dvd if its faulty(originally 15).........My friend suggested using a LAN connection between the laptop and the pc, and installing it from the laptops dvd drive........might work but id need the original dvd to play online or use stea and i dontwanna have to keep on LAN-ing with a laptop.....I could make it work without a dvd on pc if i flick a crack from the net but then the point of buying an orignial is lost i might as well have bought he pirated copy for 1/10th the price.........
I dunno if the LAN idea will work id greatly prefer another solution......

by w2ktechman

I dont always check my mail that often.

Anyway, if it is being read, but you cannot install it because your video card does not have enough memory, then you may be out of luck without upgrading hardware..

However, many notebook systems allow to change the amount of video memory through the BIOS (32/64/128/etc..)
If you do have this option it may be good to use it.
Other notebooks have a pre-determined set of RAM to use (shared).
If the system has enough resources, is there extra resources for the game to run more smoothly? Does your video card meet the Direct X requirements? If not, then take the game back or install it on a different system.

by varunrb

Its ok im glad you replied at all.....its nice having forums like these thanks for the help!
Well i dunno about the laptop......a 64 mb intel card inbuilt.i didt know about adjusting it via BIOS...but i cant use the laptop......the pc definitly has enough memory....geforce 8600 GT. Powerdvd which usually recognizes stuff the drive doesnt says its an unknown format. My warranty for the drive still runs. The dvd has no scratches.....is there any way of reinstalling my dvd driveer safely?

by w2ktechman

then either run it (depending on packaging) or go into device manager and update driver or remove driver and then reinstall it.

QQ -- the DVD disc says its PC-DVD?

by varunrb

yeah everything else reads. I replaced the dvd, still didnt read it. Then i set up(i think) a LAN connection with laptop since that reads the dvd. I had to restart comp. When i did so, it read the dvd. Valve arnt geniuses and there was a weird installation method, bu it worked. i avoided having to download the game using steam anyway :-D
:-( it asks me to insert 2nd dvd. 200 mb left to install.
noooooooooooooooo it doesnt read the 2nd one.........it only does so when i restart but then the installation cuts out and ill need 1st dvd again and........
endless loop of misery......stephen king should write about this.
I cant think of any way out. I need the internet to use steam to install it....and if i want a consistent drive i need to use the laptop via a LAN connection, but then i dont have net as theres only one output for net/lan!!!!!!!!

by varunrb

Maybe theres a way out. Why does my drive read only when it restarts? this doesnt happen when i unisntall and reinstall it......immortal advice dat "switch it on and off"
Now i dont know whether the pc has a problem with only valvess dvds. If i can burn dvd 2 onto an empty dvd using laptop ...........its copyrighted though.

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