DVD Drive half working?

Ok, so I am not quite sure where to put this...so here goes. Computer Model is a Gateway MT3707 Notebook with Vista SP2.

I have been having problems with my DVD Drive. Mind you, I am deployed to Iraq, so this isn't surprising. I put an American DVD in, and it will not read it. it will sit there and make all kinds of noises for approx 2 mins, then nothing. No auto play pop-up, I cant even go into the computer and click on the drive. If I do I get the error "E:\ Application Not Found". Ok, so I reformat my hard drive using the recovery partition on the HD. and Viola! It works...until I update windows with 115 updates (approx 453mb worth of crap that I probably dont need). Now it is doing it again. Here is the kicker...If I put in a DVD from Iraq (meaning a DVD-R/RW), it works fine. If i want to play my american version of Medal Of Honor Allied Assault...it works fine. If i want to burn a DVD...it works fine. If i want to play an audio CD...well you get the picture. The ONLY thing that WILL NOT work, no matter what I do, is reading of a Master Copy DVD from the good ol' U.S. of A.

So I am pretty sure it is something to do with an update I installed somewhere in that pile of crap. I tried updating the driver, Vista says its up to date. I tried rolling back the driver, Vista says there isnt one to roll back to.

As such...I am LOST. I dont know what else to do...Please help!

Josh.

here try downloading the latest codecs here http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Vi...c-Package.shtml

not garenteed to work, but worth a shot.

oh, and you could try manually downloading older drivers for it, by going to the manufacturs site and downloading them, but thats iffy as windows normally has default drivers for optical drives.

here try downloading the latest codecs here http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Vi...c-Package.shtml

not garenteed to work, but worth a shot.

oh, and you could try manually downloading older drivers for it, by going to the manufacturs site and downloading them, but thats iffy as windows normally has default drivers for optical drives.

The High Tech Redneck...I like it! LOL. I will download the codec's as you suggested and report back.

The manufacturer for the drive is LG...and they provide no support to individual users on this matter, only to Computer Manufacturers.


Oh and one more thing (gonna sound really bad) but what exactly is a Codec? I know the computer needs them to do certian things, but beyond that I am confused .

Patriot, I do not know what you just had me do (as in I dont know what all those things were i Installed called codec's) but worked like a charm!

WOW...i way overkilled that one. I completely reformatted the HD thinking the problem was something serious!

Thank you!

lol no problem, its actually a pretty common problem, glad it solved your problem and to answer your question a codec is a device or program that encodes/decodes software so that your computer can recognize it, basically. more on it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec.

Edited by the_patriot09, 07 March 2010 - 03:26 AM.

Sweet, thanks man!