Paula Abdul

B

BlueMak

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 16, 2007
Messages
247
Yes I do like her.

Now, I bought a DVD of her classic music videos a while ago, but I can't make it run on my PC. I think it used to work in the past (few months ago) but not any more. Windows don't recognise there is any disc inside.

I have windows XP home and the driver is a NEC DVD_RW ND-3550A with IIRC the latest firmware upgrade.

Now, when I put the DVD in the xbox 360, it plays fine no problem.


I have no problem running other DVDs on the NEC drive, including games.
What could it be?
 
You could always use DVD Decrypter to take the copy protection off of it and then burn it again and give it a try. Alternatively, just rip it to your hard drive with DVD Decrypter and play it from there.
 
Try the latest version of AnyDVD running in the system tray. :)
 
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear on this one.

Windows XP does NOT recognise the disc. I open My Computer and it shows just CD DRIVE, when I double click on it it says PLEASE INSERT DISC.

Other DVD movies lay fine.

So this Paula's DVD only plays on the xbox 360,

What could be the cause of it?
 
Well, based upon your testing....probably the drive...have you tried another drive?
 
I don't have access to another drive. :(
Is it possible that a drive will not play a single specific DVD only? :confused:
 
BlueMak said:
I don't have access to another drive. :(
Is it possible that a drive will not play a single specific DVD only? :confused:
Click to expand...

Possible...yes. Probable...unlikely.

Does it not see the disc at all...i.e the vol label never comes up?
 
A spec of dust or mark can render a disk unreadable so I'd give it a light wipe from the centre outwards with a very soft cloth.

Dont clean the disk by rubbing round the disk as any minute scratches that may be introduced are more likely to follow a track which can render a whole section unreadable/unrecoverable.
DVDs etc have error correction which can cope with quite a lot of tiny scratches running from the centre outwards.
A soft cloth is unlikely to cause any issues, the above is cautionary.


A number of other things could be at fault.
Everything works to a tolerance and sometimes a normal tolerance can become unacceptable if a drive has aged a little.

For example, the laser might not be as powerful as it once was and may have difficulty reading through some scratches now or have trouble reading disks that have a small manufacturing defect that works fine in other drives.

Or your drive might have developed in imperceptible rumble which only affects those disks that are at the edge of a tolerance.
You may be able to get some drive speed software to change the max spin speed of your drive. I used such software a long time ago and dont know if its suitable for modern drives.
If all else fails return the disk for a new one.


If the disk is dirty, carefully wipe some dish washing soap over the whole disk and wash under a tap. Rub the soap off with a bare finger until every part of the disk is squeaky clean (literally, you can feel it squeak under your finger as you rub).
Shake the disk and use a very soft cloth to mop up the water so that no residue is left.
Leave to dry for a bit or blow over it to evaporate all traces of water.
 
thread title brought me in

see if you can try another dvd drive, and test a variety of dvds in that drive.

I've had the same problem happen on a few work dvd drives and replacing them is what I had to do.
 
Nenu said:
<snip>
Click to expand...

While I completely agree with your statistical analysis (because in the end, EVERYTHING is statistical,) they create DVD standards for a reason; so that every DVD has the same statistical chance at being played. The fact that other disks play fine makes me think either either the disk is authored out of spec, or the player does not meet the necessary standards to decode the disk.

OP, search the web and see if this release is causing problems for others. If not, and other disks play well in this drive/player, I'd blame the disk authoring and/or encoding of the problematic disk.
 
Few forum (I think cdfreaks was one) and reviews that I checked, after having bought this drive, were all good, meaning good things about the drive, especialy how good it writes discs.

Perhaps I should just forget about it and just insert the dvd into the xbox whenever I want to watch the videos.

Thanks for all the replies.
 
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