Ok I have two friends that both have laptops with DVD recording drives but for some reason both of them are unable to use their dvd drives for dvds only for cds I suggested for both of them to go into device manager and and unistall the dvd/cd drive and reboot the computer to see if that would fix the problem (when Windows would re-recognize the drive) but no luck, any suggestions?

Because of the different wavelength used for DVD and CD, drives use a dual laser. The commonest cause of this symptom is failure of the DVD section of the laser. A quick way to check is to attempt to boot from a bootable DVD - eg Vista Install DVD or Linux Live DVD, often supplied with computer magazines as a coverdisk. If the drive cannot read the DVD to boot from, but reads a CD OK, then it's a faulty drive. There's a faint possibility that an unusual dirtying of the laser lens is affecting the DVD beam only, so try a lens clean but that's an unlikely cause.

laptop dvd drives/burners are a bad idea, it's hard enough to get a full size one that works right for very long

we see way too many issues with them in support forums, people use them like they were intended for an everyday tool

they are a toy

same analogy with heavy duty gaming and laptops

xx66stangxx, See if both of the laptops are able to use a bootable DVD to boot the computer, if they are able to, see if there is any P2P software loaded on the computer. Some P2P software is so poorly written that the installation routine messes up the upper and lower filter settings in the registry.

will do, thanks!

ok I booted up his laptop with my vista dvd and it recognized it and started copying the files so I know it still can recognize dvd's, do you think bearshare could be the cause the dvd not working?

I would suspect corrupted filter drivers from sonic/poxio/itunes etc

http://www.bustrace.com/products/devfilter.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben...p;x=12&y=13

people think that they can load just about anything on a computer without having problems, it's not a matter of ram or cpu but a problem with badly written software, and there's a lot of that out there

Bearshare hosed the filters. The links given in DaChew's post should help you fix the issue.

**WARNING** **WARNING** **WARNING** **WARNING**

Don't mess around in the registry if you are unsure about anything, and as always BACKUP

or download ImgBurn and let it remove the filters for you

what in the heck is a P2P app doing messing with bus driver for?

DaChew, It does not happen with all machines. The P2P applications don't detect the hardware they just install filters for their own purposes, and to monitor what the users are burning with the free version. I have never seen the paid versions of P2P applications mess up the registry.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a well-designed P2P app - they do what they're supposed to do. The issue comes when they're used to download something that's infected (and is the most common reason for the bad name that P2P has received).

FWIW - At work I've only seen 2 systems with P2P installed that weren't infected (over the last year I've probably seen well over 100 of them). And infections can cause all sorts of havoc with a system. If I get a system in for repair that's got P2P installed, the first thing that I do is check thoroughly for malware - and I've been right in all but the above 2 cases.

So, the troubleshooting should start with some thorough anti-malware scans and once malware is ruled out, the rest of the troubleshooting is generally easy.

I have never seen P2P mess with the bus and I go back beyond napster days, trojans and virii mess with a lot more than the bus.


I try to specialize in this kind of problem, never run into the malware causing it tho.

Never seen it over at my other 2 forums?

sorry for taking so long to reply, college has been kicking my butt, but I will try and get his laptop so I can try out the suggestions and I will reply back a.s.a.p.

If you haven't sorted your problem, could I ask a couple of questions:

- What make and model of laptops are you using?
- The DVD's you are trying to use/open/play/copy are they (i) blank media, (ii) shop brought films, (iii) DVD's created by yourself or another?
- Have you tried a different type of media / blank DVD.